Final answer:
The Visual perception process is a complex brain function for integrating and interpreting visual stimuli to perceive a coherent visual world, involving the visual cortex and pathways for object recognition and spatial understanding.
Step-by-step explanation:
The process by which the brain links features together to perceive a unified object in our visual world is known as the Visual perception process. This complex process is crucial for navigating through physical space and interacting with our environment. The primary sensory cortex is the initiation point for sensory processing in the cerebral cortex, which then proceeds to an association area, and finally, into a multimodal integration area. The visual pathway carries information from the retinae through the thalamus to the primary visual cortex in the occipital lobe, where basic shapes and edges are recognized and compared to extract depth information. This leads to the integration of stimuli, where information is processed and compared with memories or the current state, thus forming a mental representation of the world. In the context of cognitive psychology, visual perception is part of the broader field that examines cognitions and their relationship to our experiences. Moreover, visual information may be processed along parallel pathways, namely the "what pathway" for object recognition and the "where/how pathway" for spatial location and interaction.