Book excerpt: Internationally renowned researchers discuss how the various parts of the brain process and integrate visual signals, providing up to date original findings, reviews, and theoretical proposals on visual processing. This book addresses the basic mechanisms of visual perception as well as issues such as neuronal plasticity, functional reorganization and recovery, residual vision, and sensory substitution. Knowledge of the basic mechanisms by which our brain can analyze, reconstruct, and interpret images in the external world is of fundamental importance for our capacity to understand the nature and causes of visual deficits, such as those resulting from ischemia, abnormal development, neuro-degenerative disorders, and normal aging. It is also essential to our goal of developing better therapeutic strategies, such as early diagnosis, visual training, behavioral rehabilitation of visual functions, and visual implants.