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Abstract: The cortical visual system is almost universally thought to be segregated into two anatomically and functionally distinct pathways: a ventral occipito-temporal pathway that subserves object perception, and a dorsal occipito-parietal pathway that subserves object localization and visually guided action. Accumulating evidence from both human and non-human primate studies, however, challenges this binary distinction and suggests that regions in the dorsal pathway contain object representations that are independent of those in ventral cortex and that play a functional role in object perception. Here, we review the evidence implicating dorsal object representations, and propose an account of the anatomical organization, functional contributions and origins of these representations in the service of perception.

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