The Effect of Receptive Fields on Memory

Previous studies of visual perception established that neurons in the early, lower levels of processing have small receptive fields. But when Fauvela and her colleagues looked at how perceptions and memories were represented in the various areas of the visual cortex, they discovered major differences. The remembered image was a large blurry blob at every stage. This suggests that when the memory of the image was stored, only the highest level representation of it was kept. So depending on whether information is coming from the retina or from wherever memories are stored, the brain handles and processes it very differently,. says FauvelA.