Recent, and older, studies show that there are at least three parallel feed-forward pathways that reach the visual areas of the brain outside the primary visual cortex (area V1); one is the classical pathway reaching them through area V1 while the other two by-pass V1 to reach them directly. The earliest signals reach both V1 and visual areas outside it at about 30-45 ms after stimulus onset but the precise latency depends upon characteristics of the stimulus. Moreover, stimuli belonging to some visual attributes such as colour are consciously perceived before stimuli belonging to other visual attributes such as visual motion. This temporal hierarchy in visual perception appears to depend upon differences in processing speeds, and can therefore be varied by changing the characteristics of the stimuli. Taken together, these results lead to a re-assessment of the general organization of the visual brain and to the conclusion that the visual brain consists of multiple, parallel and asynchronously organized task- and stimulus-dependent hierarchies (STDH). Which of these parallel anatomical hierarchies has temporal and perceptual precedence at any moment is related to task and stimulus and on the ability of the brain’s specialized visual areas to undertake multiple operations asynchronously.