Feature detection (nervous system)

Feature detection is a process by which the nervous system sorts or filters complex natural stimuli in order to extract behaviorally relevant cues that have a high probability of being associated with important objects or organisms in their environment, as opposed to irrelevant background or noise. Feature detectors are individual neurons—or groups of neurons—in the brain which code for perceptually significant stimuli.

Source: Wikipedia — Feature detection (nervous system) (CC BY-SA 4.0)