Vision is the most important sensory modality for humans, serving a range of fundamental daily behaviors from recognizing objects, people, places, and actions to navigation and visually guided interactions with objects and other individuals. One of the most prominent accounts of cortical functional specialization implies that the visual cortex is segregated into two pathways. The ventral pathway originates from the early visual cortex in the occipital lobe and projects to the inferior surface of the temporal cortex, and it mediates vision for perception. The dorsal pathway extends from the occipital lobe to the posterior portion of the parietal cortex, and it mediates vision for action. This key characterization of the visual system is supported by classic neuropsychological, behavioral, and neuroimaging evidence. Recent research offers new insights on the developmental trajectory of this dissociation as well as evidence for interactions between the two pathways. Importantly, an emerging hypothesis points to the existence of a third visual pathway located on the lateral surface of the ventral pathway and its potential roles in action recognition and social cognition.
