DOES THE BRAIN PERFORM A FOURIER-ANALYSIS OF THE VISUAL SCENE

The decomposition of a complex auditory sound into its constituent simple harmonic variations (pure tones) is an example of Fourier analysis. Does the brain do something like this to visual scenes, decomposing a visual pattern into some simpler representation to help ease the information-processing load? As Norma Graham explains below, the answer to this question is both yes and no. But, yes or no, the idea that the brain might do a Fourier analysis of the visual scene has been a powerful impetus to much exciting visual research in the last decade. © 1979.