The findings of Dr. Tang's group changed our understanding of vision in insects. They demonstrated that Drosophila vision has translation invariance and showed that Drosophila recognize visual objects by their features rather than by templates. Visual processing mechanisms in the small nervous system of the fruit fly may be analogous to important higher-level perceptual mechanisms that are found in primates.

This finding has substantial implications for research on visual mechanisms and our understanding of the evolution of perception.