Vision
PSY 208
Retina Cell Composition
Color Processing Theory
Processing in the Retina
Primary Visual Cortex
Contents
Development of Visual Cortex
Parallel Processing of Visual Information
Shape Analysis
Motion Perception
Tan (2021)
Introduction
• Sensation: stimuli detection in environment
• Perception: brain interpretation of sensory input
• Each of our senses has specialized receptors that are sensitive to a particular kind of
energy
• Law of specific nerve energies(Muller, 1838): states that activity by a particular nerve
always conveys the same type of information to the brain
• Visual neurons indicates light, auditory neurons indicates sound
Demo:
• If you rub your eyes, you may see spots or flashes of light even in a totally dark room. You applied
mechanical pressure, which excited visual receptors in your eyes. Anything that excites those
receptors is perceived as light.
Eye
Light from the left side of
the world strikes the right
half of the retina, and vice
versa. Light from above
strikes the bottom half of
the retina, and light from
below strikes the top half.
Retina Cell Composition
Retina Cell Arrangement
• Photoreceptor Cells > Bipolar Cells >
Amacrine Cell (for some) > Ganglion
Cells
• Bipolar Cell: Transfer signal from
photoreceptor cells
• Amacrine Cell: Refine the input to
ganglion cells, enabling certain ones
to respond mainly to particular
shapes, directions of movement,
changes in lighting, color, and other
visual features
• Ganglion Cell: Axons join to form
the optic nerve that exits through
the back of the eye
Blind spot
Blind spot: area in the retina where the axons of the three layers of retinal cells
exit the eye to form the optic nerve; no receptors, insensitive to light
• Close your left eye, stare at the cross of the image with your right eye on top
of the cross directly. Move closer to the screen slowly while keeping your
focus on the cross. You will notice at some point, the dot will disappear.
Tan (2021)
Cells in the retina
• Fovea: tiny area specialized for acute, detailed vision
• Is the central portion of the retina and allows for acute and
detailed vision
• Packed tightly with receptors
• Nearly free of ganglion axons and blood vessels
• Rods:
• Abundant in the periphery of the
human retina
• Respond to faint light
• Cones:
• Abundant in and near the fovea
• Less active in dim light, more useful in
bright light
• Essential for color vision.
• Rods:Cones = 20:1
• Both rods and cones
contain photopigments, chemicals
that release energy when struck by
light.
Characteristic Foveal Vision Peripheral Vision
Receptors Cones Proportion of rods
increases toward periphery
Convergence of input Each ganglion cell excited Each ganglion cell excited
by a single cone by many receptors
Brightness sensitivity Distinguishes among bright Responds to dim light; poor
lights; responds poorly to for distinguishing among
dim light bright lights
Sensitivity to detail Good detail vision because Poor detail vision because
each cone’s own ganglion many receptors converge
cell sends a message to the their input onto a given
brain ganglion cell
Color vision Good (many cones) Poor (few cones)
Color Processing Theory
Trichromatic theory
(Young-Helmholtz
theory):
Perceive color through the
relative rates of response by
three kinds of cones, each
one maximally sensitive to a
different set of
wavelengths.
Tan (2021)
Opponent-process theory
Theory of color vision that
proposes four primary colors
with visual neurons (or groups
of neurons) arranged in pairs:
red and green, blue and yellow
• Can explain experience of
afterimages: images that occur
when a visual sensation persists
for a brief time even after the
original stimulus is removed
Tan (2021)
Retinex Theory:
• Involves cortex
• To account for color
constancy.
• Visual perception requires
reasoning and inference, not
just retinal stimulation.
Colour
• Color-deficient vision (“color blindness”)
• An impairment in perceiving color differences
• Gene responsible is contained on the X chromosome
• Caused by either the lack of a type of cone or a cone that has abnormal
properties
• Most common form is difficulty distinguishing between red and green
• Results from the long- and medium-wavelength cones having the same photopigment
Tan (2021)
Overview of visual system
Processing in the Retina
Lateral Inhibition
• Sharpens contrasts to emphasize the borders of objects
• The reduction of activity in one neuron by activity in neighboring neurons
• The response of cells in the visual system depends upon the net result of excitatory
and inhibitory messages it receives
Lateral Inhibition
• Reduced activity in one neuron
due to activity in adjacent
neurons (fewer cells activated,
stronger neuron response)
• Net result of
excitatory/inhibitory input
• Horizontal cell stimulated via
graded membrane potential
changes(EPSP, IPSP), decays
• 8 Strong excitation, excite horizontal
cell, which in turn inhibits other
cells.
Receptive Field
• The receptive field refers to the
part of the visual field that
either excites or inhibits a cell in
the visual system of the brain
• For a receptor, the receptive
field is the point in space from
which light strikes it
• For other visual cells, receptive
fields are derived from the
visual field of cells that either
excite or inhibit
• Example: ganglion cells converge
to form the receptive field of the
next level of cells
• Ganglion cells of primates generally fall into three categories
• Parvocellular neurons
• Magnocellular neurons
• Koniocellular neurons
• Cells of the lateral geniculate have a receptive field similar to those of
ganglion cells:
• An excitatory or inhibitory central portion and a surrounding ring of the
opposite effect
Magnocellular Koniocellular
Parvocellular Neurons Neurons
Neurons
Cell bodies Small Large Small
Receptive fields Small Large Mostly small, but
variable
Retinal location In and near fovea Throughout the Throughout the
retina retina
Color sensitive? Yes No Some are
Respond to Detailed shape Movement and Varied
broad outlines of
shape
Lateral Geniculate Nucleus
• The lateral geniculate nucleus
• Part of the thalamus
• Specialized for visual perception
• Destination for most ganglion cell
axons
• Sends axons to other parts of the
thalamus and to the visual areas
of the occipital cortex
Image source: https://ppw.kuleuven.be/apps/petervanderhelm/doc/architecture.html
Primary Visual Cortex
Primary Visual Cortex
• V1 aka striate cortex
• Damage Blindsight: no conscious vision, no
visual imagery, and no visual images in their
dreams , can’t distinguish brightness and
darkness
• Some able to: identify location, avoid obstacles,
color, facial emotions (“just guessing”)
• Possible explanations?
• Small islands of health tissue support
limited function, not large enough to
provide conscious perception
• Connection from thalamus to temporal
cortex?
Image source: wikipedia
Simple, Complex Visual Fields
• Hubel & Wiesel (1959) – record activity from cat occipital cortex
• They quickly realized that the cell was responding to the edge of the slide. It had
a bar-shaped receptive field, rather than a circular receptive field like cells in the
retina and lateral geniculate.
• Simple Cell
• Receptive field with fixed
excitatory and inhibitory zones
• Most simple cells have bar-
shaped or edge-shaped
receptive fields.
• More of them respond to
horizontal or vertical
orientations than to diagonals.
• Complex Cell
• V1, V2
• Responds to a pattern of light
in a particular orientation (e.g.,
a vertical bar) anywhere within
its large receptive field, most
strongly to a moving stimulus
• End-stopped cell
• An end-stopped cell has a
strong inhibitory area at one
end of its bar-shaped receptive
field. The cell responds to a
bar-shaped pattern of light
anywhere in its broad receptive
field, provided the bar does not
extend beyond a certain point
Simple Cells Complex Cells End-Stopped Cells
Location V1 V1 and V2 V1 and V2
Binocular input? Yes Yes Yes
Size of receptive Smallest Medium Largest
field
Shape of receptive Bar- or edge- Bar- or edge- Same as complex cell, but
field shaped, with fixed shaped, but with a strong inhibitory zone
excitatory and responding equally at one end
inhibitory zones throughout a large
receptive field
Organization
• In the visual cortex, cells are grouped
together in columns perpendicular to the
surface
• Cells within a given column process similar
information
• Respond either mostly to the right or left eye,
or respond to both eyes equally
• Do not consistently fire at the same time
Feature detectors
• Feature detectors—neurons whose
responses indicate the presence of a
particular feature. (V1)
• Later researchers found that a cortical cell
that responds well to a single bar or
line responds even more strongly to a sine
wave grating of bars or lines
• Most visual researchers therefore believe
that neurons in area V1 detect spatial
frequencies rather than bars or edges
Development of Visual Cortex
Development of visual cortex
• Animal studies have greatly contributed to the understanding of the
development of vision
• Early lack of stimulation of one eye: leads to synapses in the visual
cortex becoming gradually unresponsive to input from that eye
• Early lack of stimulation of both eyes: cortical responses become
sluggish but do not cause blindness
Critical periods
• Sensitive/critical periods are periods of time during the lifespan when
experiences have a particularly strong/enduring effect
• Ends with the onset of chemicals that inhibit axonal sprouting
• Changes that occur during critical period require both excitation and
inhibition of some neurons
• Cortical plasticity is greatest in early life, but never ends
Uncorrelated Stimulation in the Two Eyes
• Strabismus: A condition in which the eyes do
not point in the same direction
• Usually develops in childhood
• Also known as “lazy eye”
• If two eyes carry unrelated messages, cortical
cell strengthens connections with only one
eye
• Development of stereoscopic depth
perception is impaired
• Leads to nearly all of the visual cortex cells
becoming responsive to only that pattern
Astigmatism
• Astigmatism refers to a blurring of
vision for lines in one direction
caused by an asymmetric curvature
of the eyes
• 70 percent of infants have astigmatism
• Normal growth reduces the prevalence
of astigmatism to about 10 percent in
4-year-old children.
Image source: wikipedia
Long term consequences of impaired infant
vision
• Study of people born with cataracts but had them removed indicate
that vision can be restored gradually, but problems persist
• Difficulty in recognizing objects
• Unable to tell that components are part of a whole
Parallel Processing of Visual Information
Parallel Processing in Visual Cortex
• Neuroscientists have identified many different brain areas that
contribute to vision in different ways
• One part of your brain sees its shape, another sees color, another
detects location, and another perceives movement
Ventral Dorsal Stream
• The ventral stream refers to the path
that goes through temporal cortex
• The “what” path
• Specialized for identifying and
recognizing objects
• The dorsal stream refers to the visual
path in the parietal cortex
• The “how” path
• Important for visually guided
movements
Image source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-dorsal-and-ventral-streams-of-the-visual-
pathway-Beyond-area-V1-shown-at_fig1_274877087
• Normal behavior makes use of both pathways in collaboration
• Damaging either stream will produce different deficits
• Ventral stream damage: can see where objects are but cannot identify them
• Dorsal stream damage: can identify objects but not know where they are
Shape Analysis
Detailed Analysis of Shape
• Receptive fields become larger and
more specialized as visual information
goes from simple cells to the complex
cells and then to other brain areas
• The inferior temporal cortex contains
cells that respond selectively to
complex shapes but are insensitive to
distinctions that are critical to other
cells
• Cells in this cortex respond to
identifiable objects
Image: https://psychology.stackexchange.com/questions/13256/do-
direct-cortical-pathways-exist-in-the-visual-system-or-do-they-all-
go-via-th
Visual Agnosia
• An inability to recognize objects despite otherwise satisfactory vision.
(“Visual lack of knowledge”)
• Common result from damage in the temporal cortex.
• Able to point to visual objects and slowly describe them but fail to
recognize what they are.
Recognizing Faces
Fusiform Gyrus, especially in the right hemisphere, responds strongly
to faces than to other objects
• Face recognition occurs relatively
soon after birth
• Newborns show strong preference
for a right-side-up face and support
idea of a built-in face recognition
system
• Facial recognition continues to
develop gradually into adolescence
Figure 5.31 How infants divided their attention between faces
A right-side-up face drew more attention than an upside-down one, regardless of whether the faces were realistic (left pair)
or distorted (central pair). They divided their attention about equally between two right-side-up faces (right pair), even
though one was realistic and the other was distorted.
Source: From “Can a nonspecific bias toward top-heavy patterns explain newborns’ face preference?” by V. M. Cassia, C.
Turati, & F. Simion, 2004. Psychological Science, 15, pp. 379–383
Prosopagnosia
• The impaired ability to recognize faces
• Occurs after damage to the fusiform gyrus of the inferior temporal cortex
• People with prosopagnosia can read, so visual acuity is not the
problem. They recognize people’s voices, so their problem is not
memory.
• When people with prosopagnosia look at a face, they can describe
each element of a face, such as brown eyes, big ears, a small nose,
and so forth, but they do not recognize the face as a whole.
Motion Perception
Motion Perception
• Involves a variety of brain areas in all
four lobes of the cerebral cortex
• The middle-temporal cortex (MT/V5)
responds to a stimulus moving in a
particular direction
• Cells in the dorsal part of the medial
superior temporal cortex (MST) respond
to expansion, contraction, or rotation of
a visual stimulus
• Both receive input from the
magnocellular path; color-insensitive
Image: http://www.cns.nyu.edu/~david/courses/perception/lecturenotes/motion/motion.html
Motion Blindness
• The inability to determine the direction, speed and whether objects
are moving
• Likely caused by damage in area MT
• Some people are blind except for the ability to detect which direction
something is moving
• Area MT probably gets some visual input despite significant damage to area
V1
• Look at yourself in a mirror and focus on your left eye. Then
shift your focus to your right eye. You did not see your eye
move.
• Try looking at someone else’s eyes while he or she focuses first
on your one eye and then the other. You do see the other
person’s eyes move, even though they moved the same
distance and the same speed as your own.
• Why can’t you detect your own eye movements?
• Area MT and parts of the parietal cortex decrease their activity
during voluntary eye movements, known as saccades
Remember to do your
Attendance Quiz @
LMS
Tan (2021)
