Is that an elephant running towards you or a pile of rocks? Since your life may depend on it, your brain makes a decision in less than 20 milliseconds.
A new software model of the visual cortex may explain how we do it. It could also point to a new way to build vision software for robots and surveillance systems.
We can tell if something is an animal or a face before we are aware we have seen anything at all. One idea is that an initial “sweep” of neuronal activity may accomplish this before feedback loops that refine our…
