A weekly deep dive into the hidden architecture of your mind. V3: Where Vision Starts Going Global Where It Lives V3, sometimes referred to as the tertiary visual cortex, is an extrastriate visual area located just beyond V2 in the visual processing hierarchy. It lies adjacent to V2 within the occipital lobe and receives most of its input from V2. Compared to V1 and V2, V3 represents a slightly later stage of visual processing and serves as an early higher-order visual area.