Topic: abstract cognition

Animals are remarkably adept at recognizing the categorical significance of stimuli and using this information to guide behavior. Investigations of visual categorization in primates have focused on a hierarchy of cortical areas that transform veridical sensory information into abstract categorical representations. However, categorical behaviors are evident throughout the animal kingdom, including in species without a neocortex, raising a question about the contributions of subcortical regions to primate categorization. One candidate structure is the superior colliculus (SC), a midbrain sensori