A weekly deep dive into the hidden architecture of your mind. The Primary Visual Cortex: Your Brain’s First Draft of Reality Where It Lives The Primary Visual Cortex, also known as V1, Brodmann's area 17, or the striate cortex, is located at the rear of your brain in the occipital lobe, positioned along the sides of the calcarine sulcus. What It Does V1 is the first place in the brain’s cortex where visual signals are analyzed. It’s the starting point for turning raw input fr

A weekly deep dive into the hidden architecture of your mind. The Lateral Geniculate Nucleus: How Your Brain Sees Before You Do Where It Lives The lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) sits inside the dorsal thalamus. There is one LGN in each hemisphere. Each LGN receives visual information from the opposite half of visual space. What It Does The LGN receives visual signals from the retina, sorts them into parallel information streams, and sends the organized output to the primary