Occipital lobe: structure and functions

Take a breath and take a look at everything that surrounds you at this very moment, without rushing. The world is full of beauties, of small nuances that make up our exciting reality. If most of us are able to perceive every visual stimulus that surrounds us, it is essentially due to the occipital lobe. That area of our brain located at the height of the neck.

It is striking how this region, being the smallest among the rest of the brain lobes, is undoubtedly the one that most affects our daily lives. Its main purpose may seem simple to us at first.: receive information through our eyes and then process it and conduct it to the frontal lobe so that it emits a response.

Now, if we carefully analyze that first look we have taken around us, we will realize that this task is very easy. When our brain looks at each stimulus, it carries out a large number of processes. It analyzes distances with respect to our position, movements as well as sizes, and also processes light (color).

Something we do without being aware of it, It implies a high neurological sophistication, an absolute precision where the occipital lobe undoubtedly allows us to move effectively in our daily lives.. It is small, but highly specialized and effective. Let’s know more information about him.

“The brain is the most complicated organ in the universe. We have learned a lot about other human organs. We know how the heart pumps and how the kidney does what it does. To some extent, we have read the letters of the human genome. But the brain has 100 billion neurons. Each one of them has about 10,000 connections.”

-Francis Collins-

Occipital lobe: location and structure

He occipital lobe is located in the posterior area of the cerebral cortex. It occupies more or less 12% of the neocortex and is in turn connected with the primary visual and association cortex. and with him calcarine groove, a gyrus that is located just inside it. All these connections make it stand out as a neural center of human vision and visual perception.

Read Also: Magnan syndrome in cocaine users

It should also be noted that, as with all our brain lobes, It has a left hemisphere and a right hemisphere. However, each one is isolated from the other by the separation of the cerebral fissure, relying in turn on the cerebellum and the dura mater.

Functions and areas of the occipital lobe

Our understanding of the world is based almost exclusively on the sense of sight. The occipital lobe is constantly processing visual stimuli, analyzing distances, shapes, colors, movements… Everything that reaches you through the retina goes through this analysis and processing center, and then sends the information to the cerebral cortex. However, in order to execute this information transfer, it must first go through a series of areas. They are the following.

Primary visual area or region 17 Brodmann. We are in the most posterior region of the occipital lobe, also known as V1. If you suffer an injury to this region, the person would be unable to see because he would not be able to process any stimulus even though his retinas and eyes are in good condition.Secondary visual area (Brodmann 18) or V2. Here the pre-striate and inferotemporal cortex extend. The first, in addition to receiving information from the primary visual area, is also responsible for stimulating memory. That is, we can associate visual stimuli with others seen previously. For its part, the inferotemporal cortex helps us recognize what we see.Tertiary visual area (Brodmann 19) or V3, V4 and V5. This area receives information from the previous structures. Its main function is to process color and movement.

All cited sources were reviewed in depth by our team to ensure their quality, reliability, validity and validity. The bibliography in this article was considered reliable and of academic or scientific accuracy.

Kandel, E.R.; Schwartz, J.H.; Jessell, T. M. (2001). Principles of Neuroscience. Madrid: McGraw Hill.

Joseph, R (2011) Temporal Lobes: Occipital Lobes, Memory, Language, Vision, Emotion, Epilepsy, Psychosis. University Press

Kandel, E., Schwartz, J. Jessell, T. Principles of Neural Science. 3rd edition. New York: NY. Elsevier, 1991.

Westmoreland, B. et al. Medical Neurosciences: An Approach to Anatomy, Pathology, and Physiology by Systems and Levels. New York: NY. Little, Brown and Compay, 1994.