What sort of culling of visual information does the brain do?

[sazr]

The brain receives a lot of visual information some of which is redundant visual information. I am imagining it like the brain receiving a 1000 pixel wide by 1000 tall image of a road. The brain has received 1,000,000 bits/pixels of information. I am assuming the brain doesn't need all that information in order to detect the road in the image and localise where in the image the road is. But correct me if I am wrong here.

So the brain must be culling information? Removing irrelevant information? Doing some other efficient processing to only look at N pixels not all 1 million right? Can you inform me on what sort of things its doing here to efficiently handle all 1 million bits of information?

 

[jim mcnamara]

Here is a popular science explanation (originally from phys.org) https://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-eyes-brain.html

Basically your brain fills in the"blank" spots with what was imaged there (remembered) in detail very recently. This why people's "attention" darts back and forth when there is unexpected movement or color change in the periphery of vision. Sort of a data refresh, replacing that area of images of the periphery data store.

 

[BillTre]

I wouldn't call it kulling.
The information will be utilized to generate higher order features (like edges or objects) which in turn will be used to generate even higher order features (which will be fewer in number).
The continued input of this kind of information will be needed to maintain and update this internal constructions.

 

[sazr]

The information will be utilized to generate higher order features (like edges or objects) which in turn will be used to generate even higher order features (which will be fewer in number).

In computer vision we would apply a Sobel/Prewitt/etc. filter to the 1000x1000 image. And in that case we consider all 1 million data points, in this case, to detect edges. I was thinking, our way of edge detection (whilst works) is inefficient and the brain would have a more efficient way to edge detect and etc. But maybe I am wrong? What do you think? Do we know how the brain is performing edge detection and other low level processing?

 

[BillTre]

Edge detectors have been detected electro-physiologically, for a long time.
Here is a recent review of fly visual system boundary detection, which being a simple (invertebrate) nervous system presents clear results.
The fly gets this done with a nervous system that is smaller then the head of a pin.