V4

From Psy3242

Overview

V4 is a visual processing area in the ventral "what" stream (responsible for object recognition and form representation). It is thought to be a major color processing center of the brain; Sacks describes it as possessing a "higher-order, color-generating mechanism" (34). Recently, however, research has come out to question this area's role as the processing center for color, pointing to a different area, sometimes called the "human V4" (as V4 is mentioned in relation to its appearance in the brains of macaque monkeys) or V8, as responsible for our processing of color. In fact, a study by Sperling et al. in 2006 found that both areas are activated when color-grapheme synaesthetic subjects are shown letters.

Sources

Sacks, Oliver. The Case of the Colorblind Painter.