The talk focuses on color as a model system to gain traction on how cortical circuits function to bring about high-level perception and cognition. After a brief review of the putative neural mechanisms for color contrast in V1, Conway turns his attention to the great swath of extrastriate cortex implicated in object vision. He describes recent experiments aimed at uncovering the functional organization of color circuits within inferior temporal cortex, and what these circuits may be doing in service of color perception and color cognition.