VISUAL SYSTEM: THE EYE

3.1: Appraise the nature of light as electromagnetic energy to explain the relation of wavelength
to perception.

1. Visible light is a small slice of the electromagnetic spectrum.

2. The electromagnetic spectrum is the complete range of wavelengths of light and other
electromagnetic energy.

3. Light from a light source such as the sun or a reading lamp reflects off objects in the
environment and enters our eyes.

4. The pattern of light enters our eye, and then our visual processes start decoding it.

5. Light is made up of particles called photons that also behave in a wavelike manner.

6. We see differences in wavelengths as different colors.

3.2: Sketch the anatomy of the eye to show how it makes vision possible.

1. Field of view: the part of the world you can see without eye movements. Human eyes are located
approximately 6 cm (2.4 inches) apart from each other. For humans, field of view is
approximately 190 degrees horizontally (side to side) and 140 degrees vertically (up and down).

2. The cornea and the pupil control the amount of light that enters the eye.

3. The size of the pupil adjusts to control the amount of light entering the eye, and then the lens
focuses that light on the retina to make a retinal image.

4. The retina contains photoreceptors, which convert the light energy into a neural signal.

3.3: Interpret how the retinae transduce light energy into a neural signal that is sent to the brain.

1. The rods and cones of the retina are able to convert light into a neural signal through chemicals
known as photopigments.

2. Photopigments are molecules that absorb light and by doing so release an electric potential by
altering the voltage in the cell.

3. When a photopigment absorbs a photon of light, it changes shape.

4. This change of shape initiates a series of biochemical processes, which result in a change of
electric potential, which allows for a signal to exit the photoreceptor.

5. In this way, a neural signal leaves the photoreceptor and is transmitted to the optic nerve to be
sent to the brain.

6. Opsin is the protein portion of a photopigment that captures the photon of light and begins the
process of transduction.

7. It is the variation in this opsin that determines the type of visual receptor.

3.4: Illustrate how the visual system adapts to the dark and then adapts again to the light to help
us adjust to changing light levels.

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1. The retina has two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones.

2. Rods: photoreceptors at the periphery of the retina; they are very light sensitive and specialized
for night vision (scotopic).

3. Cones: photoreceptors in the fovea of the retina; they are responsible for color vision and our
high visual acuity (photopic).

4. Fovea: an area on the retina that is dense in cones but lacks rods; when we look directly at an
object, its image falls on the fovea.

5. Macula: the center of the retina; the macula includes the fovea but is larger than it

6. The duplex theory of vision states that there are functionally two distinct ways that our eyes
work, one, the photopic, associated with the cones, and the other, the scotopic, associated with
our rods.

7. Dark adaptation: It is the process in the visual system whereby its sensitivity to low light levels is
increased. Dark adaptation takes about 15 minutes. Part of the explanation for dark adaptation
includes the properties of the photopigments themselves. Dark-adapted eyes have a higher
concentration of rhodopsin, the active pigment in the rods. Other factors include dilation of the
pupil, which happens rapidly in lower light levels, and other factors in how the retina processes
light.

8. Light adaptation: It is the process whereby the visual system’s sensitivity is reduced so that it can
operate in higher light levels. Light adaptation will be completed in about 5 minutes, or even
less, as the visual system switches back to relying on cones rather than rods. Dark adaptation is
therefore much slower. It seems that this difference is due partly to the fact that light adaptation
is driven actively by the light entering the eye, whereas dark adaptation is a more passive
response to the lack of light.

9. Technologies have been developed to allow people to see visual displays, such as computers with
red light that do not interfere with dark adaptation.

3.5: Diagram the receptive fields of retinal ganglion cells, and show how they need contrast to
operate.

1. The rods and cones project to cells called the retinal ganglion cells, whose axons exit the eye
through the optic nerve.

2. Retinal ganglion cells have receptive fields.

3. Receptive fields are regions of adjacent receptors that will alter the firing rate of cells that are
higher up in the sensory system.

4. The term can also apply to the region of space in the world to which a particular neuron
responds.

5. These receptive fields have a characteristic shape known as center-surround.

6. Center-surround receptive fields occur when the center of the receptive field responds opposite
to how the surround of the receptive field responds.

7. If the center responds with an increase of activity to light in its area, the surround will respond
with a decrease in activity to light in its area (on-center).

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8. If the center responds with a decrease of activity to light in its area, the surround will respond
with an increase in activity to light in its area (off-center).

9. This creates the phenomenon of lateral inhibition.

10. Lateral inhibition is the reduction of a response of the eye to light stimulating one receptor by
stimulation of nearby receptors.

11. It is caused by inhibitory signals in horizontal cells and creates the Mach band illusion.

12. It is responsible for enhanced edge detection by our visual system.

3.6: Judge the different refractive errors and eye diseases on how they affect the ability of the eye
to see.

1. Myopia, presbyopia, and hyperopia are common problems in the refracting power of the lens.

2. Myopia: It is a condition causing an inability to focus clearly on far objects, also called
nearsightedness; occurs because accommodation cannot make the lens thin enough.

3. Hyperopia: a condition causing an inability to focus on near objects, also called farsightedness;
occurs because accommodation cannot make the lens thick enough.

4. Presbyopia: a condition in which incoming light focuses behind the retina, leading to difficulty
focusing on close-up objects; common in older adults, in whom the lens becomes less elastic.

5. Astigmatism: It is a condition that develops from an irregular shape of the cornea or the lens,
which makes it impossible for the lens to accommodate a fully focused image.

6. They are all correctible with eyeglasses.

7. Cataracts occur when the lens gets cloudy and allows less or no light to pass through.

8. Macular degeneration and retinitis pigmentosa are diseases of the retina that can lead to serious
visual impairment.

9. Macular degeneration leaves a blind spot right at the location we are trying to look at.

10. Retinitis pigmentosa can cause tunnel vision in its early and middle phases and lead to total
blindness later on.

VISUAL SYSTEM: THE BRAIN

4.1: Identify the anatomy of the optic chiasm and how that affects the lateralization of vision in
the brain.

1. Optic disc: the part of the retina where the optic nerve leaves the eye and heads to the brain;
along the optic disc, there are no receptor cells.

2. When information from the optic nerve enters the optic chiasm, information crosses over, so that
the axons from the ganglion cells from the right half of the right retina and the ganglion cells
from the right half of the left retina combine, forming the right optic tract, which then proceeds
to the right hemisphere of the brain (and similarly for the other half of the system).

4.2: The anatomy of the lateral geniculate nucleus and the superior colliculus, and describe their
roles in visual processing.

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1. The optic nerve projects to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN).

2. The LGN is a six-layered structure in the thalamus that serves as a relay point for the
transmission of visual information, although processing of information also occurs in the LGN.

3. Each of the three types of retinal ganglion cells (parasol, midget, and bistratified) projects to a
particular layer of the LGN.

4. The parasol retinal ganglion cells project to the magnocellular layer of the LGN (forming the M
pathway), the midget retinal ganglion cells project to the parvocellular layer of the LGN
(forming the P pathway), and the bistratified retinal ganglion cells project to the koniocellular
layer of the LGN (forming the K pathway).

5. The superior colliculus can be found at the top of the brain stem, just beneath the thalamus.

6. Its main function is the control of rapid eye movements.

4.3: Explain the nature of the retinotopic organization of V1 and the organization of V2.

1. After leaving the LGN, the next synapse in the visual pathway is in the primary visual cortex in
the occipital lobe of the brain.

2. The primary visual cortex is also known as V1 (and area 17).

3. The cerebral cortex is the outer surface of the brain.

4. It consists of four lobes: the frontal, the temporal, the parietal, and the occipital.

5. The occipital lobe is the visual brain.

6. V1 is in the occipital lobe right toward the back of the head.

7. It is a six-layered structure with different layers receiving input from different regions of the
LGN.

8. V1 is organized in retinotopic coordinates, which also refer to the spatial organization of the
external world.

9. One of the features in V1 is cortical magnification.

10. Cortical magnification means that there is more space in the cortex devoted to some sensory
receptors than to others.

11. In this case, the fovea has a larger cortical area than the periphery.

12. The Nobel prize–winning scientists Hubel and Wiesel discovered both simple cells and complex
cells in V1, which are sensitive to different properties of the visual stimulus.

13. Simple cells are V1 neurons that respond to stimuli with particular orientations to objects within
their receptive field.

14. The preferred orientation of a simple cell is the stimulus orientation that produces the strongest
response from the simple cell.

15. Complex cells are also neurons in V1 that respond optimally to a stimulus with a particular
orientation.

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16. But, unlike simple cells, they respond to a variety of stimuli across different locations.

17. In particular, they also respond best to moving stimuli.

18. End-stopped neurons respond to stimuli that end within the cell’s receptive field.

19. V1 is organized into columns, which are sensitive to orientation and ocular dominance.

20. A hypercolumn is a 1-mm block of V1 containing both the ocular dominance and orientation
columns for a particular region in visual space.

21. Hypercolumns also include information about where in space those columns are.

22. Blobs are groups of neurons within V1 that are sensitive to color, whereas interblobs are the
groups of neurons that are sensitive to orientation.

23. The M pathway, K pathway, and P pathway all enter the cortex through V1.

24. There are three distinct regions within V2, which match directly up with the three different types
of cells in V1.

25. Thin stripes have color responses, thick stripes are sensitive to motion, and interstripes are
sensitive to shape and position.

4.4: Compare the difference between the dorsal pathway and the ventral pathway.

1. Starting with V1, we can see two distinct pathways, the dorsal and ventral pathways.

2. The dorsal pathway is responsible for information about movement and continues through MT in
the occipital lobe and then into the parietal lobe.

3. The ventral pathway is responsible for object and color recognition.

4. It goes through areas such as V2 and V4 before heading into the inferotemporal cortex in the
temporal lobe.

5. Nowhere in the brain has it been found where all of the visual information converges to a single
location.

6. It now appears that vision happens with the simultaneous or approximately simultaneous
activation across all of the visual areas.

7. Forward and backward connections are thought to play a role in synchronizing a response in the
brain, so that our perceptual experiences are of whole objects and not fragmented parts.

4.5: Interpret the concepts of blindsight and conjugate gaze palsy.

1. Blindsight is the neuropsychological condition in which damage to V1 causes a blind spot or

2. However, because of noncortical areas such as the superior colliculus, the patient can still make
visual responses in the absence of conscious seeing.

3. Blindsight has drawn significant interest from philosophers.

4. For them, the intriguing phenomenon is that someone is blind but is making responses to visual
stimuli.

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5. This seeming paradox is resolved when we think of conscious seeing as being a function of V1
in the cortex.

6. Conjugate gaze palsies are a series of disorders of vision, brought about by damage to the oldest
part of the brain, namely, the brain stem.

7. In conjugate gaze palsy, brain damage to the brain stem occurs that affects the ability of our eyes
to train on the same object.

8. Conjugate palsies are sometimes seen as complications in Parkinson’s disease, after cardiac
surgery, and when the pineal gland is compromised.

9. Parinaud’s syndrome occurs from lesions in the superior colliculus.

10. Rather than irregular movements and difficulties coordinating the two eyes, patients with
Parinaud’s syndrome have a paralysis of gaze.

11. They must move their heads, rather than their eyes, to track motion.

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