Chapter 6

Vision
 Introduction
• Sensory receptors – a specialized neuron that
detects a particular category of physical
events
• Sensory transduction – the process by which
sensory stimuli are transduced into slow,
graded receptor potentials
 The Stimulus
• The perceived color of light is determined by 3
dimensions:
– Hue – the dominant wavelength
– Saturation - purity
– Brightness - intensity
 Anatomy of the visual system
• Eyes –
– Suspended in the orbits of
the skull
– Held in place by 6 extraocular
muscles
– Retina – the neural tissue and
photoreceptive cells located
on the inner surface of the
posterior position of the eye
– Fovea – the region of the
retina that mediates the most
acute vision; color sensitive
cones constitute the only
type of photoreceptor here
 Anatomy of the visual system
• Eyes
– Photoreceptor – one of the receptor cells of the retina; transduces
photic energy into electrical potentials
• Rod – sensitive to light of low intensity
• Cones – maximally sensitive to one of 3 different wavelengths of light and
hence encodes color vision
– Optic disk – the location of the exit point from the retina of the fibers
of the ganglion cells that form the optic nerve; responsible for the
blind spot
– 3 types of movements:
• Vergence movements – the cooperative movements that keep both eyes
fixed on the same target
• Saccadic movements – rapid, jerky movements of the eyes used in
scanning a visual scene
• Pursuit movement – the movement made to maintain an image of a
moving object on the fovea
 Photoreceptors
• Each photoreceptor consists of an
inner segment and an outer
segment, which contains several
hundred lamellae (thin plate of
membrane)
 Visual info transduction
• Photopigments are special
molecules embedded in the
lamellae (e.g. rhodopsin) and
consists of 2 parts:
– Opsin – protein
– Retinal – lipid
• When a molecule of rhodopsin is
exposed to light it breaks into its
two parts, and this causes a
change in the membrane
potential of the photoreceptor,
which changes the firing rate of
glutamate
 Visual info transduction
• The membrane of photoreceptors is
different from others – the cation
channels (sodium and calcium) are
normally open
• In the dark these ion channels are open,
and so the photoreceptors continually
release glutamate
• When light strikes the photopigment,
the G protein transducin is activated,
which then activate the enzyme
phosphodiesterase which closes the ion
channels; this lowers the rate of
glutamate release
• Light hyperpolarizes the photoreceptor
and then depolarizes the bipolar cell
 Connections between eye and brain
• The axons of the retinal ganglion cells project through the optic nerves,
cross over through the optic chiasm to the dorsal lateral geniculate
nucleus (LGN)
• The LGN consists of 6 layers of neurons: the inner 2 layers are called the
magnocellular layers and the outer 4 are called the parvocellular layers
• The cells in the LGN project through the optic radiations to the primary
visual cortex (aka striate cortex)
• Diagram of visual pathways
 Coding of light and dark
• The receptive field of a neuron in the visual system is the part of the visual
field that an individual neuron “sees”, i.e. the part in which light must fall
for the neuron to be stimulated
• 2 major types of retinal ganglion cells, ON center and OFF center cells
– ON center cells are excited by light falling in the center of the field (center),
and inhibited by light falling in the surrounding field (surround)
– OFF center cells are excited by light in the surround, and inhibited by light in
the center
 Coding of light and dark
• The center-surround organization of the retinal ganglion cells enhances
our ability to detect the outlines of objects
 Coding of color
• The retinas of humans, Old World monkeys and apes contain 3 different
types of cones which provide us with an elaborate form of color vision
• All visible colors (for humans at least) can be mixed from the 3 main
colors: red (long), green (medium), and blue (short); due to the
wavelengths absorbed by the 3 different cones (trichromatic theory)
• Genetic defects can cause one or more of the 3 types of cones to not
function properly, resulting in either protanopia, where red and green are
confused because the red cones respond to green; deuteranopia, where
where red and green are confused also, but because the green cones
respond to red; or tritanopia, where they lack blue cones
 Anatomy of the striate cortex
• Consists of 6 principle layers, arranged in bands parallel to the surface
• These layers contain the nuclei of cell bodies and dendritic trees that show
up as bands of light or dark in section of tissue that have been dyed with a
cell body stain.
• The striate cortex of one hemisphere contains info from the contralateral
visual field
• Approx. 25% of the striate cortex is devoted to analysis of info from the
fovea
• Neurons in the visual cortex selectively respond to specific features of the
visual world, not just to light
 Orientation and Movement
• Most neuron in the striate cortex are sensitive to the orientation as if a
line is positioned in the cell’s receptive field and rotated around its center,
the cell will respond only when the line is in a particular position.
• Simple cell – an orientation-sensitive neuron whose receptive field is
organized in an opponent fashion
• Complex cell – a neuron that responds to the presence of a line segment
with a particular orientation located within it s receptor field, especially
when the line moves perpendicularly to its orientation
• Hypercomplex cell – a neuron that responds to the presence of a line
segment with a particular orientation that ends at a particular point within
the cell’s receptive field
 Spatial Frequency
• Neurons in the primary visual cortex respond best to sine-wave gratings,
which are a series of straight parallel bands varying continuously in
brightness according to a sine-wave function, along a line perpendicular to
their lengths
• A sine-wave grating is designated by its spatial frequency, or the relative
width of the bands, measured in cycles per degree of visual angle
• The most important visual information is that contained in low spatial
frequencies
 Retinal disparity
• Binocular vision (i.e. from 2 eyes) provides a vivid perception of depth
through the process of stereoscopic vision, or stereopsis
• Most neurons in the primary visual cortex are binocular, they respond to
info of either eye
• The cells respond most vigorously when each eye sees a stimulus in a
slightly different location, called retinal disparity
 Color
• In the striate cortex, info from color-sensitive ganglion cells is transmitted
through to special cells grouped into cytochrome oxidase (CO) blobs
Modular organization of the striate cortex
• The striate cortex is divided into ~2500 modules, each containing
~150,000 neurons
• The neurons in each module are devoted to the analysis of various
features contained in one very small portion of the visual field, and
combine together to form a complete whole
• Info from the layers of the LGN project to the different layers of the
modules
• The modules consist of 2 segments, each surrounding a CO blob
– The neurons in the CO blobs are sensitive to color and low spatial frequencies
– The neurons outside of the blobs are sensitive to orientation, movement,
spatial freq, texture and binocular disparity
 Role of the visual association cortex
• Two streams of visual analysis
– Visual info receive from the striate cortex is analyzed in the visual assc cortex
– Neurons in the striate cortex project to the extrastriate cortex, which
surrounds the visual assc cortex
– The primate extrastriate cortex consists of several specialized regions that
respond to particular features of a visual stimulus
– Contains 2 streams of analysis:
• Dorsal stream – a system of interconnected regions of visual cortex involved in the
perception of spatial location, beginning with the striate cortex and ending with the
posterior parietal cortex
• Ventral stream – a system of interconnected regions of visual cortex involved in the
perception of form, beginning in the striate cortex and ending in the inferior
temporal cortex
 Perception of color
• Color constancy – the relatively constant appearance of the colors of
objects under varying lighting conditions; the visual system compensates
for the source of light when process visual information about colors
• Achromatopsia – inability to discriminate among different hues; caused by
damage to the visual assc cortex
 Analysis of form
• In primates the recognition of visual patterns and identification of particular objects take
place in the inferior temporal cortex, located at the end of the ventral stream on the ventral
part of the temporal lobe
– Analyses of form and color are put together here and perceptions of 3D objects and backgrounds are
achieved
– Consists of 2 major regions: TE and TEO
• Damage to the human visual assc cortex can result in a visual agnosia, which results in an
inability to perceive or identify a visual stimulus
– Apperceptive visual agnosia – failure to perceive objects, even though visual acuity is normal (e.g.
cannot name an object by looking at it, but can if allowed to touch it)
– Prosopagnosia – failure to recognize particular people by the sight of their faces (i.e. can recognize by
voice, hair color, etc.)
• Fusiform face area – region of the extrastriate cortex located at the base of the brain;
involved in perception of faces and other complex objects that require expertise to recognize
• Associative visual agnosia – inability to identify objects that are perceived visually, even
though the form of the perceived object can be drawn or matched with similar objects;
appears to involve difficulty in transferring visual info to verbal mechanisms