The story about C.J. helps to illustrate that spatial processing is not a single cognitive function, but rather consists of many different abilities. Some of C.J.’s spatial abilities, such as understanding the relationship between the map and the surrounding terrain, and knowing geographical points of reference (north, south, east, and west), were compromised by her stroke, yet other abilities – such as determining left and right – were unaffected. In this chapter, we examine the many ways in which spatial relations among items can be computed and the brain systems that enable these computations.
We learned in Chapter 5 that the visual cortex provides a precise retinotopic map of space. However, a retinotopic map is inadequate for fully understanding the space around us. First, as we have already discussed in relation to object recognition, the retina only provides two-dimensional information about the three-dimensional world.
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