In the late 1990's sensation and perception consists of many exciting research areas. These areas represent an expansive continuum from studies directed at the earliest, "low-level" stages of sensory processing to those directed at later "high-level" perceptual mechanisms.

In this chapter we consider examples of what we feel are exciting areas of research in sensation and perception from both ends of this continuum, with an emphasis on the current state of the discipline. These examples, then, are primarily from the areas of vision and visual perception and represent both basic and applied science. We conclude with a brief discussion of possible future directions for the discipline, using as an example research in the area of virtual reality. Because it currently drives a great deal of the research and thinking in sensation and perception, we begin with current explorations in the area of visual neuroscience.