Neuronal Mechanisms of Object Recognition

Recognition of objects from their visual images is a key function of the primate brain. This recognition is not a template matching between the input image and stored images like the vision in lower animals but is a flexible process in which considerable change in images, resulting from different illumination, viewing angle, and articulation of the object, can be tolerated. Recent experimental findings about the representation of object images in the inferotemporal cortex, a brain structure that is thought to be essential for object vision, are summarized and discussed in relation to the computational frames proposed for object recognition.