page_title: Visual memory
section_title: Visual cortex
hierarchical_section_title: Visual memory / Neuroanatomy / Visual cortex
context_page_description: Visual memory describes the relationship between perceptual processing and the encoding, storage and retrieval of the resulting neural representations. Visual memory occurs over a broad time range spanning from eye movements to years in order to visually navigate to a previously visited location. Visual memory is a form of memory which preserves some characteristics of our senses pertaining to visual experience. We are able to place in memory visual information which resembles objects, places, animals or people in a mental image. The experience of visual memory is also referred to as the mind's eye through which we can retrieve from our memory a mental image of original objects, places, animals or people. Visual memory is one of several cognitive systems, which are all interconnected parts that combine to form the human memory. Types of palinopsia, the persistence or recurrence of a visual image after the stimulus has been removed, is a dysfunction of visual memory.
context_section_description: There is a visual cortex in each hemisphere of the brain, much of which is located in the Occipital lobe. The left hemisphere visual cortex receives signals mainly from the right visual field and the right visual cortex mainly from the left visual field, although each cortex receives a considerable amount of information from the ipsilateral visual field as well. The visual cortex also receives information from subcortical regions, such as the lateral geniculate body, located in the thalamus. However, ample evidence indicates that object identity and location are preferentially processed in ventral (occipito-temporal) and dorsal (occipito-parietal) cortical visual streams, respectively.
  Comparison of rCBF during performance of the two tasks again revealed differences between the ventral and dorsal pathways.
caption: The dorsal stream (green) and ventral stream (purple) are both actively involved in visual memory. Both pathways originate in the visual cortex