A rich behavioral literature has shown that human object recognition is supported by a representation of shape that is tolerant to variations in an object's appearance. Such 'global' shape representations are achieved by describing objects via the spatial arrangement of their local features, or structure, rather than by the appearance of the features themselves. However, accumulating evidence suggests that the ventral visual pathway – the primary substrate underlying object recognition – may not represent global shape. Instead, ventral representations may be better described as a basis set of local image features. We suggest that this evidence forces a reevaluation of the role of the ventral pathway in object perception and posits a broader network for shape perception that encompasses contributions from the dorsal pathway.

丰富的行为文献表明，人类物体识别得到了容忍物体外观变化的形状表示的支持。这种“全局”形状表示是通过局部特征或结构的空间排列来描述对象，而不是通过特征本身的外观来实现的。然而，越来越多的证据表明，腹侧视觉通路——物体识别的主要底物——可能并不代表整体形状。相反，腹侧表示可以更好地描述为局部图像特征的基础集。我们认为，这一证据迫使人们重新评估腹侧通路在物体感知中的作用，并提出了一个更广泛的形状感知网络，其中包括背侧通路的贡献。