Vision

General Principles of Perception 3. The axon of ganglion cells joins one another to form the
• Each of our sense has specialized receptors that are optic nerve that travels to the brain.
sensitive to a particular kind of energy 4. Amacrine cells - it refines input to ganglion cells,
• Receptors for vision are sensitive to light enabling certain ones to respond mainly to particular
• Receptors “transduce” (convert) energy into shapes, direction of movements, changes in lighting,
electrochemical patterns so that the brain can perceive color, and other visual features
sights, sounds, smells, etc.
• In 1838, Johannes Muller described these insights which Amacrine cells - are additional cells that receive information
is the Law of specific nerve energies. from bipolar cells and send it to other bipolar, ganglion, or
• Law of specific nerve energies - states that activity by a amacrine cells.
particular nerve always conveys the same type of
information to the brain.
o Ex. impulses in one neuron indicate light; impulses in
another neuron indicate sound.
• Which neuron respond, the amount of response, and the
timing of response influence what we perceive.

The Eye and Its Connections to the Brain

• Light enters the eye through an opening in the center of the
iris called the pupil Optic nerve - consists of the axons of ganglion cells that band
• It is focused by the lens(adjustable) and cornea (not together and exit through the back of the eye and travel to the
adjustable) and projected onto the retina – rear surface of brain.
the eye and lined with the visual receptors Light from the - The point at which the optic nerve leaves the back of the
left side of the world strikes the right side of the retina, and eye is called the blind spot because it contains no
vice versa. receptors.
• Light from the above strikes the bottom half of the retina,
and vice versa. Fovea and Periphery of the Retina
• The central portion of the retina is the fovea (meaning
“pit”), a tiny area specialized for acute, detailed vision.
o Because blood vessels and ganglion cell axons are
almost absent near the fovea - nearly unimpeded
vision.
o Packed tight of receptors - aids perception of
details.
• Each receptor in the fovea attaches to a single bipolar cell
which connects to single ganglion cell, with an axon to the
brain.
• The ganglion cells in the fovea of humans and other
primates are called midget ganglion cells.
• Midget ganglion cells provide 70% of the input to the brain,
out vision is dominated by what we see in the fovea.
• Each cone in the fovea has a direct line to the brain which
allows the registering of the exact location of input.
Route within the Retina (Process) • In the periphery of the retina, a greater number of receptors
1. Visual receptors send messages to neuron called bipolar converge onto bipolar and ganglion cells.
o Detailed vision is less in peripheral vision
cells, located closer to the center of the eye.
o Foveal vision has better acuity (sensitivity to
2. Ganglion cells, that are even closer to the center of the
eye. detail), and peripheral vision has better sensitivity
to dim light.
• Expression “eyes like a hawk”.
 • Bird species have two foveas per eye, one pointing ahead • We call these wavelengths “light” only because the
and one pointing to the side. Extra foveas enable receptors in our eyes are tuned to detecting them.
perception of details in the periphery. • Two major interpretations of color vision include the
• Predatory birds have a greater density of visual following:
receptors on the top half of their retina (looking down) o Trichromatic Theory/Young-Helmholtz
than on the bottom half (looking up) o Opponent-Process Theory
o They spend most of their day soaring high in the
air looking down.

Visual Receptors: Rods and Cones

• The vertebrate retina contains two types of receptors:
o Rods - abundant in the periphery of the human
retina
▪ Respond to faint light but are not useful in
daylight because bright light bleaches them.
▪ 120 million rods
o Cones - abundant in and near the fovea
▪ Less active in dim light, more useful in bright
light and essential for color vision.
▪ 6 million cones Trichromatic Theory/Young-Helmholtz Theory
• Thomas Young (1773-1829), was the 1st person to
advance the understanding, and later modified by
Hermann vonn Helmholtz.
• According to this theory, we perceive color through the
relative rates of response by three kinds of cones.
• Trichomatic means three colors
o Short-wavelength
o Medium-wavelength
o Long-wavelength
• We discriminate among wavelengths by the ratio of activity
across the three types of cones
o Light at 550 nm excites the medium-wavelength and
long-wavelength receptors about equally and the
short-wavelength receptor almost not at all.
• Even cones are outnumbered, they provide about 90% of • Incomplete theory of color vision
the brain’s input o Negative color afterimage
• Photopigments - chemicals contained by both rods and
cones that release energy when struck by light. Opponent-Process Theory
o It consists of 11-cis-retinal bound to proteins called
• Proposed by Ewald Hering, a 19th-century physiologist
opsins, which modify the photopigments’ sensitivity
• We perceive color in terms of opposites
to different wavelengths of light
• Brain has a mechanism that perceives color on a
• Light converts 11-cisretinal to all-trans-retinal, thus
continuum from red to green, another from yellow to blue,
releasing energy that activates second messengers
another from white to black.
within the cell
• A possible mechanism for the theory is that bipolar cells
are excited by one set of wavelengths and inhibited by
Color Vision
another.
• The perception of color is dependent upon the
wavelength of the light.
The Retinex Theory
• Visible light consists of electromagnetic radiation within
• Suggest the cortex compares information from various
the range from less than
parts of the retina to determine the brightness and color for
o Shortest visible wavelengths as violet
each area
o Longer wavelengths are perceived as blue, green
yellow, orange, and red
 • Color constancy, the ability to recognize color despite • The optic nerves from the two eyes meet at the optic
changes in lighting chiasm
• In humans, half of the axons from each eye cross to the
Color Vision Deficiency opposite side of the brain.
• is an impairment in perceiving color differences • Most ganglion cell axons go to the lateral geniculate
• Gene causing this deficiency is on the X chromosome. nucleus, part of the thalamus.
o 8% of men are red-green coloblind compared with o Geniculate comes from latin root genu, meaning
less than 1% of women. “knee”
o Most common form is difficulty distinguishing o A smaller number of axons go to the superior
between red and green colliculus and other areas, including part of the
hypothalamus that controls the waking–sleeping
How the Brain Processes Visual Information
Overview of the Mammalian Visual System
• Rods and cones of the retina make synapses with
horizontal cells and bipolar cells
• The horizontal cells make inhibitory contact onto
bipolar cells
• Bipolar cells make synapse onto amacrine cells and
ganglion cells.
• The axon from the ganglion cells forms the optic nerve
which leaves the retina and travels along the brain

The Neural Basis of Visual Perception

• The lateral geniculate nucleus is part of the thalamus
specialized for visual perception
o Destination for most ganglion cells
o Sends axons to other parts of the thalamus and to the
visual areas of the occipital lobe
o Cortex and thalamus feed information back and forth to
each other

Processing in the Retina

• Lateral inhibition – is the retina’s way of sharpening
contrasts to emphasize the borders of objects.
o It is the reduction of activity in one neuron by activity in
neighboring neurons.
o The response of cells in the visual system depends upon
the net result of excitatory and inhibitory messages it
receives.

Further Processing
• Receptive field refers to the part of the visual field that
either excites or inhibit a cell in the visual system of the
brain.
 oTo find a cell’s receptive field, an investigator records o no visual images in their dreams
from the cell while shining light in various locations. • Adults who lose vision because of eye damage continue
▪ If light from a particular spot excites the neuron, to have visual imagery and visual dreams
then that location is part of the neuron’s excitatory • People with damage to area V1 show
receptive field. If it inhibits activity, the location is o Blindsight the ability to respond in limited ways to
in the inhibitory receptive field. visual information without perceiving it consciously.
• Ganglion cells converge to form the receptive field of the
next level of cells Simple and Complex Receptive Fields
o Parvocellular neurons • Hubel and Wiesel distinguished several types of cells in
o Magnocellular neurons the visual cortex.
o Koniocellular neurons o Simple Cells
o Complex Cells
Parvocellular neurons o End-stopped/hypercomplex cells
• with small cell bodies and small receptive fields. Simple Cells
• mostly in or near the fovea. (Parvocellular means “small • has a receptive field with fixed excitatory and inhibitory
celled,” from the Latin root parv, meaning “small.”) zones.
• Highly sensitive to detect color and visual detail • The more light shines in the excitatory zone, the more
Magnocellular neurons the cell responds.
• with larger cell bodies and receptive fields • The more light shines in the inhibitory zone, the less the
• distributed evenly throughout the retina. (Magnocellular cell responds.
means “large celled,” from the Latin root magn,
meaning “large.” The same root appears in magnify.)
• Are highly sensitive to large overall pattern and moving
• stimuli
Koniocellular neurons
• have small cell bodies, similar to the parvocellular
neurons, but they occur throughout the retina.
• Koniocellular means “dust celled,” from the Greek root
meaning “dust.” They got this name because of their
granular appearance.)
• Their axons terminate in many different places Complex cells
• located in areas V1 and V2, do not respond to the exact
location of a stimulus.
• A complex cell responds to a pattern of light in a
particular orientation anywhere within its large receptive
field.
• Respond to a pattern of light in a particular orientation
and most strongly to a moving stimulus.

Primary Visual Cortex

• Information from the lateral geniculate nucleus of the
thalamus goes to the primary visual cortex in the
occipital cortex, also known as area V1 or the striate
cortex because of its striped appearance.
• People with damage to area V1 report
o no conscious vision
o no visual imagery
End-stopped, or hypercomplex, cells • Stereoscopic depth perception requires the brain to
• Resemble complex cells with one exception: An end- detect retinal disparity, the discrepancy between what
stopped cell has a strong inhibitory area at one end of the left and right eyes see.
its bar-shaped receptive field. o Ex. Imagine a kitten with weak or damaged eye
• Respond to a bar-shaped pattern of light anywhere in its muscles so that its eyes do not point in the same
large receptive field, provided the bar does not extend direction.
beyond a certain point • Both eyes are active, but no cortical neuron consistently
receives messages from one eye that match messages
from the other eye.
• Certain children are born with strabismus (or strabismic
amblyopia), also known as “lazy eye,” a condition in
which the eyes do not point in the same direction.
• Generally, these children attend to one eye and not the
other.
o treatment is to put a patch over the active eye,
forcing attention to the other one.
• Astigmatism, a blurring of vision for lines in one
direction, caused by an asymmetric curvature of the
eyes.
o About 70% of all infants have
• Study of people born with cataracts but had them
removed at age 7 or 12 indicate that vision can be
restored gradually, but problems persist:
o Their acuity (ability to see detail) remained poor,
Are Visual Cortex Cells Feature Detectors? and their motion perception
• Cells in the visual cortex may be feature detectors - o Depth perception never reached normal levels
neurons whose responses indicate the presence of a
particular feature. Parallel Processing in the Visual Cortex
• Prolonged exposure to a given visual feature decreases The Ventral and Dorsal Paths
sensitivity to that feature. • The primary visual cortex (V1) sends information to the
o Ex. if you stare at a waterfall for a minute or more secondary visual cortex (area V2), which processes the
and then look to the side, the rocks and trees next information further and transmits it to additional areas
to the waterfall appear to flow upward. o For example, V1 sends information to V2, and V2
• Waterfall illusion suggests that you have fatigued the returns information to V1. From V2, the
neurons that detect downward motion, leaving information branches out in several directions for
unopposed the detectors for the opposite motion. specialized processing.

Development of the 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.
• For each aspect of visual experience, researchers
identify a sensitive period, when experiences have a
particularly strong and enduring influence
• Changes that occur during critical period require both The “What” and “Where” Paths
excitation and inhibition of some neurons • They call the ventral stream through the temporal cortex
• Cortical plasticity is greatest in early life, but it never the perception pathway or the “what” pathway, because
ends. of its importance for identifying and recognizing objects.
 • The dorsal stream through the parietal cortex is the Color Perception
action pathway or the “how” pathway, because of its • Color perception depends on both the light reflected on
importance for visually guided movements an object and how it compares with objects around it
• The two streams communicate o Area V4 may be responsible for color constancy
o Each participates in identifying what and where an and visual attention
object is. o Color constancy: the ability to recognize
• Damaging either stream will produce different deficits something as being the same color despite
o Ex. A woman known as patient DF was exposed changes in lighting
to carbon monoxide, causing damage mainly to Motion Perception
the ventral stream—that is, the temporal cortex Two areas especially important for motion perception
and its connections with the primary visual cortex • MT (for middle temporal cortex), also known as area V5
Result: She cannot name the objects she sees, o respond selectively when something moves at a
cannot recognize faces. particular speed in a particular direct
People with damage to the dorsal stream (parietal cortex) have • Adjacent region, area MST (medial superior temporal
somewhat the opposite problem: cortex).
• They see objects but they don’t integrate their vision well o respond to expansion, contraction, or rotation of a
with their arm and leg movements. large visual scene
• They can read, recognize faces, and describe objects in Motion blindness, being able to see objects but unable to see
detail but they cannot accurately reach out to grasp an whether they are moving or, if so, which direction and how fast
object. • Likely caused by damage in area of MT (middle
temporal cortex)
The Inferior Temporal Cortex • Some people are blind except for the ability to detect
• Cells in the inferior temporal cortex learn to recognize which direction something is moving
meaningful objects. • Several mechanisms prevent confusion or blurring of
• Shape constancy is the ability to recognize an object’s images during eye movements
shape • Saccades are a decrease in the activity of the visual
• despite changes in direction or size cortex during quick eye movements
o The inferior temporal neuron’s ability to ignore • Neural activity and blood flow decrease 75 ms before
changes in size and direction contributes to our and during eye movements
capacity for shape constancy
Visual agnosia (meaning “visual lack of knowledge”) is an
inability to recognize objects despite otherwise satisfactory vision
• Damage to the ventral pathway usually in the temporal
cortex
o Ex. one patient, when shown a key, said, “I don’t
know what that is. Perhaps a file or a tool of some
sort.” When shown a stethoscope, he said that it
was “a long cord with a round thing at the end.”
When he could not identify a smoker’s pipe, the
examiner told him what it was. He then replied,
“Yes, I can see it now,”
Recognizing Faces
• Face recognition occurs relatively soon after birth
• People with cataracts removed at 2-6 months develop
nearly normal vision but have slight difficulties in
distinguishing faces
• 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