ABSTRACT
Mortimer Mishkin and Leslie Ungerleider are best known for demonstrating the existence of two distinct visual systems in the primate brain, one coursing through the temporal cortex and the other through the parietal cortex, which are involved in object recognition and spatial awareness, respectively. In 1982, Ungerleider and Mishkin published a paper that became a classic in the field of visual neuroscience. Based on extensive electrophysiological, anatomical and behavioural evidence, including much of their own research, they proposed the existence of two anatomically distinct cortical visual systems in the rhesus monkey's brain. Although some of Mishkin's work in Hartford examined the consequences of frontal lobe lesions on tasks requiring delayed responding, his most interesting work was on the temporal lobes and their involvement in visual processing. The theory of separate systems in the brain for visual object recognition and spatial location was a major breakthrough, which helped synthesise a large amount of data into a coherent whole.
