The occipital cortex is the primary visual area of the brain. It has different groups of neurons that separately encode color, orientation, and motion information.

The occipital cortex is the primary visual area of the brain. It receives projections from the retina (via the thalamus) from where different groups of neurons separately encode different visual information such as color, orientation, and motion. Pathways from the occipital lobes reach the temporal and parietal lobes and are eventually processed consciously. Two important pathways of information originating in the occipital lobes are the dorsal and ventral streams. The dorsal stream projects to the parietal lobes and processes where objects are located. The ventral stream projects to structures in the temporal lobes and processes what objects are.