The Neuropsychology of Vision describes a range of new approaches to neuropsychological investigation and provides a broad overview of visual neuropsychology. The book starts by presenting the results from new research employing single-unit recordings, on the neuronal basis of perception demonstrating that the visual system relies strongly on feedback from higher to lower levels of information processing, and that neuronal plasticity exists in the primary sensory cortices of adults, areas previously considered to be hard-wired. The book also describes other new and adapted techniques to measure brain activity, including multi-unit sum potential recording, functional magnetic resonance imaging and employing transcranial magnetic stimulation to induce temporary, circumscribed functional lesions in the cortices of normal subjects to mimic disorders. The coverage then moves on to review the experience of patients suffering from disturbances of visual perception. The disorders covered include agnosia, neglect, blindsight and achromatopsia. The final chapter is devoted to recovery and rehabilitation from cerebral visual disorder. Professors Fahle and Greenlee have brought together some of the leading international specialists in the field to provide this comprehensive and up-to-date review.

Because of his rejection of socio-political engagement, Vladimir Nabokov is often regarded as a virtuouso artist of the ivory-tower variety, aloof from the contemporary march of the minds. Marina Grishakova's book, however, points to the relationship between his narrative techniques and some of the scientific, metaphysical, and ethical ideas on the inner agenda of the twentieth century. It connects Nabokov's handling of time, space, and perspective in his fiction with the philosophical models constructed by his contemporaries, also showing in what ways he may have been ahead of his time.

A Harvard neurobiologist explains how vision works, citing the scientific origins of artistic genius and providing coverage of such topics as optical illusions and the correlation between learning disabilities and artistic skill.

This volume was designed to focus on the problems of perception and originally was to have been solely edited by Professor Hans-Lukas Teuber who was a member of the editorial board which initiated production of the Handbook. Accordingly, he issued invitations to a number of researchers III perception asking them to contribute chapters written in a style described III his words: " . . . Ire hope that no author lI'ill feel COl/strained to undertake a major search of the literature: he could In'ite, instead. on an area in which he has been quite actire himse?t~ and II'here most of the issues are immediately obt"ious to him. In this Iray, the IITiting of the chapter should be cnjoyable rather than a chore . . it should result in a personal account of the state of a given area rather than in an encyclopedic treatise . . . the field deserves this sort of summary ret'iell", particularly (f it is pointed toward the future and speeds the convergence of det'elopments in sensory physiology and psychological studies of perception, " With the growing burden of national and international commitments includ ing departmental headship, Professor Teuber felt that it would be wise to share the editorial responsibilities for this volume and accordingly, asked Professors Richard Held and Herschel Leibowitz to co-edit the volume with him in the same spirit as outlined in his invitation to authors. They agreed to help in this task.

Available again, an influential book that offers a framework for understanding visual perception and considers fundamental questions about the brain and its functions. David Marr's posthumously published Vision (1982) influenced a generation of brain and cognitive scientists, inspiring many to enter the field. In Vision, Marr describes a general framework for understanding visual perception and touches on broader questions about how the brain and its functions can be studied and understood. Researchers from a range of brain and cognitive sciences have long valued Marr's creativity, intellectual power, and ability to integrate insights and data from neuroscience, psychology, and computation. This MIT Press edition makes Marr's influential work available to a new generation of students and scientists. In Marr's framework, the process of vision constructs a set of representations, starting from a description of the input image and culminating with a description of three-dimensional objects in the surrounding environment. A central theme, and one that has had far-reaching influence in both neuroscience and cognitive science, is the notion of different levels of analysis—in Marr's framework, the computational level, the algorithmic level, and the hardware implementation level. Now, thirty years later, the main problems that occupied Marr remain fundamental open problems in the study of perception. Vision provides inspiration for the continuing efforts to integrate knowledge from cognition and computation to understand vision and the brain.