In order to make sense of the world, the brain gathers and processes information it receives from the five senses. Visual perception is a critical part of this process and should not be considered as simply a passive recording of visible material.

Visual perception starts with a raw visual material received by the eye, then transferred to and analyzed by the visual brain and then it greatly depends on the range of imagery available through memory and organised by a total lifetime’s experience into a system of visual concepts. The mind manipulates these concepts merging sensual perception and stored experience. Visual perception does not objectively accord with the world as-it-is, as the world as-it-is is more than pure objective fact, it includes consciousness.

As far as the visual system is concerned, perception is purposeful and selective. The selectivity of our visual perception is greatly dependent upon our distinct ‘attention’ and ‘visual search’. The former involves a kind of focalisation on important aspects of the visual field and the periphery of the visual field, whereas the latter includes the process of linking several fixations on the same visual scene to allow more detailed exploration.

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