VISION

General Principle of Perception

Rene Descartes – we perceive differently

Like 1 and 0 of computer data, we have neurons that stores everything

Law of specific nerve energy – John Muller

Eyes perceive light – example is rubbing the eyes

Ears perceive sound – electric will initially be a sound. If strong enough, it might
stimulate/excite pain receptor therefore, shock

It depends which neurons are active in perceiving senses and not the physical locations of
the brain.

The eye and its connection to the brain

Pupil – center of iris

Lens can be adjusted

Cornea – cannot be adjusted

Retina – rear of the eye lined with visual receptors

Inverse image pose no problem because the visual system does not replicate image. Rather,
it codes them through neural activity

Route within the retina

Visual receptors from the retina – goes to bipolar cells (located at the center of the eye)
which sends the message to the ganglion cells. The ganglion cells’ axon then joins
together and travel back to the brain. Amacrine cells get the information from the
bipolar cells and sends it to other bipolar cells, ganglion, and amacrine cells. Amacrine
cells refine the input to ganglion cells which enables certain cells to respond to
particular shapes, color, direction of movement, etc.

Ganglion, amacrine, and bipolar are transparent cells. Which means the light that passes
through them ay
Blind spot : no receptors, where information (ganglion cell axons) exits the eye

The visual system uses information from cells around the blind spot for “completion,”
filling in the blind spot.

Where axons of retinal ganglia (ganglion cells) leave the eye

Fovea and periphery of the retina

Fovea (pit) used for specialized acute, detailed vision (eg. Reading texts)

Fovea : high-acuity area at center of retina

Thinning of the ganglion cell layer reduces distortion due to cells

between the pupil and the retina.

o Rich in cones – each cone in fovea has a direct connection to the brain (through the
ganglion cells’ axons or midget ganglion cells)

provides 70% of input to the brain. Vision is dominated by what you see in and near the
fovea.

Fun fact: hawks have 2 foveas per eye; owls have many receptors on the upper half of
the retina

Cones and rods

When looking in the dark, you don’t see a lot of color

Contains photopigments (release energy when struck by light) which consists of Vit.A
derivative (11-cis-retinal) bound to opsins (protein)

Color Vision

Visible light contain electro magnetic radiation. We perceive less than 400nm to more
than 700 nm. We call wavelengths as light because that is how we perceive them. (other
animals can see ultraviolet radiation visual receptors which we cant see.)
 Thomas Young - we perceive color by comparing the responses across a few types of
receptors, each of which was sensitive to a different range of wavelengths.

Herman von Helmholtz – Trichromatic theory/Young-Hemlholtz theory

We perceive color through the relative rates of response by three kinds of cones, each
one maximally sensitive to a different set of wavelengths. People could match any color
by mixing appropriate amounts of just three wavelengths. we discriminate among
wavelengths by the ratio of activity across the three types of cones. We see white and
gray with equally active cones.

Retinex theory

Retina

Cortex compares information from various parts of the retina to determine brightness
and color for each area

Color Blindness (black and white only) – Color vision deficiency (more proper term)

Color blind people have satisfactort vision because ccolor is perceived (in the brain) and
not on the object itself

Deficiency in x chromosome

Since women has 2 x chromosomes, few can see finer color differences than others

2 eyes combined has 250Million receptors. We only extract meaningful patterns

Lateral inhibition – reduction of activity in one neuron by activity in neighboring neuron.

Example: being able to understand speech amid noise,