English: Organization of the visual system.

Top: schematic view of the left hemisphere of a human brain. The front of the brain is displayed on the left, the back on the right. Lower visual areas receive visual information first and are located in the back of the brain (blue). Higher visual areas get the information later and can be found further toward the front of the brain (red). Bottom: illustration of feed-forward connections (gray) and feedback connections (orange) from higher visual areas (red) to lower ones (blue).

Receptive fields. Structures like the retina and primary visual cortex have very small receptive fields; their pixels are small and any individual neuron only “sees” a very tiny portion of a scene. As one progresses along the feed-forward anatomical chain from lower visual areas like V1 to higher visual areas, these receptive fields likewise get bigger.