Reviews: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision, the Myth of Pain, Encyclopedia of Psychology

In the preface of her The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Vision, Farah states that her`modest little goal' for the book is to review the whole of vision, from the retina to consciousness. Some goal! Not only does Farah cover the vast majority of topics in vision, she also attempts to draw on many different ways of researching visual processing: from single-cell studies to fMRI, from visual psychophysics to cognitive neuropsychology, and there is also a bit of computer modelling thrown in! This must have been a mammoth task, especially for a single author, but the result is an enjoyable and readable review. Farah starts with``Early Vision'' in chapter 1, commencing with the retina and moving through the lateral geniculate nucleus to the primary visual cortex; the distinction between magnocellular and parvocellular processing is discussed at some length. Chapter 2, ``From Local to Global Image Representation'', discusses colour and motion perception, and moves onto image segmentation and perceptual grouping or binding. Chapter 3, ``The Problem of Visual Recognition'', introduces the debate on how the image on the retina can be transformed into a representation of an object. Here, Farah draws few conclusions, but clearly explains why this is a difficult problem, and introduces Marr and Nishihara's computational framework, which is used to direct discussion in chapter 4. Chapter 4, ``Object Recognition'', expands on chapter 3 and particularly discusses the role of the inferior temporal cortex in object recognition (this chapter also contains my favourite subheading: ``Object recognition in inferior temporal cortex: a miracle occurs!''). ``Face'' and``Word'' recognition are covered in chapters 5 and 6 respectively, and are discussed in terms of whether they are more specialist forms of object recognition with common mechanisms, or whether they are totally independent processes, either functionally, or anatomically, or both. Farah then moves to the higher-level process of``Visual Attention'' (chapter 7), discussing both the neural basis and the control of attention. Chapter 7 is followed with a chapter dedicated tò`Hemispatial Neglect'' (chapter 8) and how evidence from patients with this syndrome can inform our knowledge of spatial representation and attention. In chapter 9, ``Mental Imagery'', Farah discusses where the distinction between`perception' and`cognition' lies before reviewing mental image representation and generation. Finally, chapter 10 on``Visual Awareness'' reviews literature concerned with the conscious experience of vision, concentrating on what happens when the normal conscious experience fails as a result of brain damage. The Cognitive Neuroscience of Vision is …