Visual Processing of Information

August 18th, 2007 Fred McVittie

Much information accessed via the senses is processed by the visual centres of the brain, even when the information itself is not primarily visual. For this reason we might speak of the ‘visual processing of information’, rather than simply the ‘processing of visual information’. The latter implies a method of treating data which is neutral with regard to its origin in any particular sensory mode and a distinction in the data itself according to those origins, whereas the former acknowledges that, whatever sensory channel information may arrive from it is essentially of the same type. It is the way of processing this information which renders it ‘visual’ ‘auditory’ etc. (This is confirmed by the experience of synaesthetics). An example of this is when we conceive of temperature as being ‘high’ or ‘low’, in which instance we are treating sensory information which is purely tactile by mapping it onto an imaginary visual space, almost as if we are looking at a graph of temperature or the rising and falling of liquid in a thermometer. It might be said that this is purely a metaphor and is of no relevance to brain science, however, as demonstrated by Lakoff and Johnson, such use of metaphor is the stuff of cognition, not simply the poetic icing on the cake. Metaphors are instantiated in the networks of the brain such that when talking about temperature as being ‘high’ we are effectively utilising visual networks, and it is this supervenient use which underpins the metaphor.

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