What are dorsal and ventral route for?

What are dorsal and ventral route for?

The dorsal pathway (''where'') includes brain areas in the occipital and parietal lobes that are involved in localizing objects in space and feeding information to the motor systems for visually guided action. Dorsal pathway=spatial properties.

The ventral pathway (''what'') includes areas in the occipital and temporal lobes that are involved in object recognition. Ventral pathway=object properties.

Both of the routes help us guide our action in every-day life activities and the different tasks we often need/want to accomplish. The dorsal and ventral routes are needed, for us to identify objects and know their spatial position. For example a postman must indentify the shape of a letter in order to put it in the mailbox holding it vertically or horizontally depending (again) on the shape of the mailbox.

From this, we can see that even though the 'what' and 'where' routes contain separable neural substrates, we still experience the world in which both of these routes are somehow integrated.

A dorsal pathway is important in processing information on where things are in place and how they might act on this. A ventral pathway processes information, just like the dorsal pathway, but it is important to the recognition and identification of objects.

Just like Kasia said above, basically, the dorsal pathway is the "where" and the ventral pathway is the "what."