Vision

In the human visual system, the eye receives physical stimuli in the form of light and sends
those stimuli as electrical signals to the brain, which interprets the signals as images.
Key Points
• Human vision is one of the most complex visual systems among animals.
• The main sensory organ of the visual system is the eye, which takes in the physical stimuli of
light rays and transduces them into electrical and chemical signals that can be interpreted by
the brain to construct physical images.
• The eye has three main layers: the sclera, which includes the cornea; the choroid, which
includes the pupil, iris, and lens; and the retina, which includes receptor cells called rods and
cones.
•The human visual system is capable of complex color perception, which is initiated by cones in
the retina and completed by impulse integration in the brain.
Depth perception is our ability to see in three dimensions and relies on both binocular (two-eye)
and monocular (one-eye) cues.
Key Terms
• phototransduction: The process whereby the various bodies in the retina convert light into
electrical signals.
• retina: The thin layer of cells at the back of the eyeball where light is converted into neural
signals sent to the brain.
• photoreceptor: A specialized neuron able to detect and react to light. Includes both cones
(daytime and color) and rods (nighttime).
Vision depends mainly on one sensory organ—the eye. Eye constructions vary in complexity
depending on the needs of the organism.
The human eye is one of the most
complicated structures on earth, and it
requires many components to allow our
advanced visual capabilities. The eye has
three major layers:
1. the sclera, which maintains, protects,
and supports the shape of the eye and
includes the cornea;
2. the choroid, which provides oxygen
and nourishment to the eye and
includes the pupil, iris, and lens; and
3. the retina, which allows us to piece
images together and includes cones
and rods.
Both the eye and a camera are instruments that use a lens to focus light onto a light-sensitive
surface on which the visual image is registered.
the optic chiasm is a complicated crossover of optic nerve fibers behind the eyes at the bottom
of the brain, allowing the right eye to “wire” to the left neural hemisphere and the left eye to
“wire” to the right hemisphere. This allows the visual cortex to receive the same visual field from
both eyes.
Color Vision
Human beings are capable of highly complex
vision that allows us to perceive colors and
depth in intricate detail. Visual stimulus
transduction happens in the retina.
Photoreceptor cells found in this region have the
specialized capability of phototransduction, or
the ability to convert light into electrical signals.
There are two types of these photoreceptor cells:
rods, which are responsible for scotopic vision
(night vision), and cones, which are responsible
for photopic vision (daytime vision).
Generally speaking, cones are for color vision
and rods are for shadows and light differences.
The front of your eye has many more cones than
rods, while the sides have more rods than
cones; for this reason, your peripheral vision is
sharper than your direct vision in the darkness,
but your peripheral vision is also in black and white.
Color vision is a critical component of human vision and plays an important role in both
perception and communication. Color sensors are found within cones, which respond to
relatively broad color bands in the three basic regions of red, green, and blue (RGB). Any colors
in between these three are perceived as different linear combinations of RGB. The eye is much
more sensitive to overall light and color intensity than changes in the color itself. Colors have
three attributes: brightness, based on luminance and reflectivity; saturation, based on the
amount of white present; and hue, based on color combinations. Sophisticated combinations of
these receptors signals are transduced into chemical and electrical signals, which are sent to
the brain for the dynamic process of color perception.
Depth Perception
Depth perception refers to our ability to see the world in three dimensions. With this ability, we
can interact with the physical world by accurately gauging the distance to a given object. While
depth perception is often attributed to binocular vision (vision from two eyes), it also relies
heavily on monocular cues (cues from only one eye) to function properly. These cues range
from the convergence of our eyes and accommodation of the lens to optical flow and motion.
Auditory
The human auditory system allows us to perceive and localize sounds in our physical
environment.
Key Points
• The human sense of hearing is attributed to the auditory system, which uses the ear to collect,
amplify, and transduce sound waves into electrical impulses that allow the brain to perceive and
localize sounds.
•The ear can be divided into the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear, each of which has a
specific function in the process of hearing.
• The outer ear is responsible for the collection and amplification of sound. The air-filled middle
ear transforms sound waves into vibrations, protecting the inner ear from damage. The fluid-
filled inner ear transduces sound vibrations into neural signals that are sent to the brain for
processing.
• The cochlea is the major sensory organ of hearing within the inner ear. Hair cells within the
cochlea perform the transduction of sound waves.
• Humans are capable of estimating a sound’s origin through a process called sound
localization, which relies on timing and intensity differences in sound waves collected by each of
our two ears.
Key Terms
• afferent: Leading to the brain.
• interaural: Describing the differences between the reception of sound (especially timing and
intensity) by each ear.
The human auditory system allows the body to collect and interpret sound waves into
meaningful messages. The main sensory organ responsible for the ability to hear is the ear,
which can be broken down into the outer ear, middle ear, and inner ear. The inner ear contains
the receptor cells necessary for both hearing and equilibrium maintenance. Human beings also
have the special ability of being able to estimate where sounds originate from, commonly called
sound localization.
The Ear
The ear is the main sensory organ of the auditory
system. It performs the first processing of sound and
houses all of the sensory receptors required for hearing.
The ear’s three divisions (outer, middle, and inner) have
specialized functions that combine to allow us to hear.
The outer ear is the external portion of the ear, much of
which can be seen on the outside of the human head. It
includes the pinna, the ear canal, and the most
superficial layer of the ear drum, the tympanic
membrane. The outer ear’s main task is to gather sound
energy and amplify sound pressure. The pinna, the fold of cartilage that surrounds the ear
canal, reflects and attenuates sound waves, which helps the brain determine the location of the
sound. The sound waves enter the ear canal, which amplifies the sound into the ear drum. Once
the wave has vibrated the tympanic membrane, sound enters the middle ear.
The middle ear is an air-filled tympanic (drum-like) cavity that transmits acoustic energy from
the ear canal to the cochlea in the inner ear. This is accomplished by a series of three bones in
the middle ear: the malleus, the incus, and the stapes. The malleus (Latin for “hammer”) is
connected to the mobile portion of the ear drum. It senses sound vibrations and transfers them
onto the incus. The incus (Latin for “anvil”) is the bridge between the malleus and the stapes.
The stapes (Latin for “stirrup”) transfers the vibrations from the incus to the oval window, the
portion of the inner ear to which it is connected. Through these steps, the middle ear acts as a
gatekeeper to the inner ear, protecting it from damage by loud sounds.
Unlike the middle ear, the inner ear is filled with fluid. When the stapes footplate pushes down
on the oval window in the inner ear, it causes movement in the fluid within the cochlea. The
function of the cochlea is to transform mechanical sound waves into electrical or neural signals
for use in the brain. Within the cochlea there are three fluid-filled spaces: the tympanic canal,
the vestibular canal, and the middle canal. Fluid movement within these canals stimulates hair
cells of the organ of Corti, a ribbon of sensory cells along the cochlea. These hair cells
transform the fluid waves into electrical impulses using cilia, a specialized type of
mechanosensor.

The Process of Hearing

Hearing begins with pressure waves hitting the auditory canal and ends when the brain
perceives sounds. Sound reception occurs at the ears, where the pinna collects, reflects,
attenuates, or amplifies sound waves. These waves travel along the auditory canal until they
reach the ear drum, which vibrates in response to the change in pressure caused by the waves.
The vibrations of the ear drum cause oscillations in the three bones in the middle ear, the last of
which sets the fluid in the cochlea in motion. The cochlea separates sound according to their
place on the frequency spectrum. Hair cells in the cochlea perform the transduction of these
sound waves into afferent electrical impulses. Auditory nerve fibers connected to the hair cells
form the spiral ganglion, which transmits the electrical signals along the auditory nerve and
eventually on to the brain stem. The brain responds to these separate frequencies and
composes a complete sound from them.
Sound Localization
Humans are able to hear a wide variety of sound frequencies, from approximately 20 to 20,000
Hz. Our ability to judge or estimate where a sound originates, called sound localization, is
dependent on the hearing ability of each ear and the exact quality of the sound. Since each ear
lies on an opposite side of the head, a sound reaches the closest ear first, and the sound’s
amplitude will be larger (and therefore louder) in that ear. Much of the brain’s ability to localize
sound depends on these interaural (between-the-ears) differences in sound intensity and timing.
Bushy neurons can resolve time differences as small as ten milliseconds, or approximately the
time it takes for sound to pass one ear and reach the other.