Vision

By: Shreya, Jaren, Meishe, Jacob, Khyla, and

Vision
- Gives our bodies the ability to see our physical environment
- 4 basic steps
- First we have to gather light into our eye.
- The light has to be channeled to the back of the eye.
- Transduction occurs.
- The information goes to our brain where we interpret it.
 Occipital Lobes
The occipital lobe is one of the four major lobes of the cerebral cortex in the
brain of mammals.

The occipital lobe is the visual processing center of the brain containing most of
the anatomical region of the visual cortex

- Visual processing in visual cortex

Parallel Processing
Parallel processing is the ability of the brain to do many things at once. For example, when a person sees
an object, they don't see just one thing, but rather many different aspects that together help the person
identify the object as a whole.

- You may see the colors red, black, and silver. These colors alone may not mean too much, but if you
also see shapes such as rectangles, circles, and curved shapes, your brain may perceive all the
elements simultaneously, put them together and identify it as a car
Step one: Gathering light
For the AP it is important to understand that we only see a small fraction of the light spectrum.
There are all kinds of light waves out there from long ones (infrared, microwaves or radio waves) to
short ones (ultraviolet waves X-rays or even gamma waves (like what made the Hulk)). The light
we can see is in what we call the visible light spectrum, and from shortest to longest goes violet,
indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and red. The height of the light wave determines it’s intensity or
brightness. While the length of the wave determines it’s hue (color). So when we look at am object,
these light waves enter our eye.

Wavelength - The way we measure sound waves, audio waves, and other types of waves is by their
length and their height (amplitude). The length of a wave (or wavelength) refers to the distance
between the peak of one wave and the peak of the next wave.
Step 2: Light channeled with the eye
Once the light hits the eye it goes through a variety of
structures. Take a look at the diagram below.

The white part of our eye is called the cornea and

basically protects and helps reflect light. The light
goes through a hole in our eye called a pupil. The
pupil is like the shutter on a camera, it opens or
closes to let light in. The colored part of your eye is
called the iris. The iris is a muscle that sole job is to
open (dilate) or close (constrict) the pupil. So when
the light goes through the pupil it first hits the lens.
The lens is almost like a magnifying glass that
reflects the light toward the back of our eye. The lens
is constantly changing shape depending on whether
we are looking at objects close to us or far away.
Visual accommodation
- The bending of the lens is called accommodation.
- When adults become old, their lens becomes rigid and they cannot reflect light properly to the
back of their eye and need reading glasses.
- A really cool thing about the lens is that it reflects the light upside down and inverted toward
the back of the eye (retina).
- Our brain must switch the image back right side up or we would have serious
perception issues.
Step 3: Transduction
Ok, so how does our eye turn the light into neural impulses so that our brain can understand. Most of the
process occurs on the back of the eye called the retina. The retina is the most important part of our eye
(it is often referred to as the brain of the eye). First, it is important to know that the retina is made up of
several layers of cells and the light must pass through all of them to experience transduction (kind of like
a water filtration process).
Rods and Cones
The first layer of cells to be activated by light are called the rods and cones. Rods see only black and
white and are spread throughout the outside of the retina. Cones see color and are located in the center
of the retina known as the fovea. Rods outnumber cones by about 20 to 1. Since the cones are located in
the fovea (in the center of the retina) we see color objects better if they are directly in front of us. Since
rods are located on the periphery of the retina- we see black and white better in out peripheral vision.
More on photoreceptors
Rods are responsible for vision at low light levels (scotopic vision).
They do not mediate color vision, and have a low spatial acuity.

Cones are active at higher light levels (photopic vision), are capable
of color vision and are responsible for high spatial acuity.

- The central fovea is populated exclusively by cones.

- 3 types of cones: short-wavelength sensitive cones, the
middle-wavelength sensitive cones and the long-wavelength
sensitive cones or S-cone, M-cones, and L-cones

The light levels where both are operational are called mesopic.
Transduction cont.
- Ok- so the lens reflects the light back to the retina and it hits the rods and cones. If the rods and
cones fire- they send the information to a second layer of cells called bipolar cells
- the bipolar cells give the information to a layer of cells called the ganglion cells. The axons of the
ganglion cells make up our optic nerve which sends the information to the thalamus in our brain
and where the optic nerve hits the retina is sometimes called our blind spot: There is a certain
spot on the optic nerve that does not have any receptor cells
- and the area that the optic nerves crosses/intersects in our head is called the optic chiasm
Trichromatic theory
According to the trichromatic theory of color vision, also known as the Young-Helmholtz theory of
color vision, there are three receptors in the retina that are responsible for the perception of color.
One receptor is sensitive to the color green, another to the color blue and a third to the color red.
These three colors can then be combined to form any visible color in the spectrum.
Opponent Process Theory
Opponent Process theory: The opponent process theory of color vision suggests that our ability to
perceive color is controlled by three receptor complexes with opposing actions. These three receptors
complexes are the red-green complex, the blue-yellow complex, and the black-white complex.
According to the opponent process theory, these cells can only detect the presence of one color at a time
because the two colors oppose one another. You do not see greenish-red because the opponent cells can
only detect one of these colors at a time.
How do they differ?
While the trichromatic theory makes clear some of the processes involved in how we see color, it does
not explain all aspects of color vision. The opponent process theory of color vision was developed by
Ewald Hering, who noted that there are some color combinations that people simply never see.

For example, while we often see greenish-blue or blueish-reds, we do not see reddish-green or yellowish-
blue. Opponent process theory suggests that color perception is controlled by the activity of two
opponent systems: a blue-yellow mechanism and a red-green mechanism.
Eyesight
- Feature Detectors: The ability to detect certain types of stimuli, like movements, shape, and
angles, requires specialized cells in the brain called feature detectors. Without these, it would be
difficult, if not impossible, to detect a round object, like a baseball, hurdling toward you at 90
miles per hour.
- Nearsightedness- the ability to see near objects more clearly than distant objects, it’s also known
as myopia
- Farsightedness - where you can see distant objects clearly but object nearby may be blurry
- Color blindness - it is a vision defect where the eye perceives certain colors differently than
others, can be hereditary or caused by a disease of the optic nerve or retina
Energy Sense
The senses of vision, hearing, and touch.

-These senses gather energy in the form of light, sound waves, and pressure, respectively.
What do we see?
Light is seen on the visible spectrum : The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic
spectrum that is visible to the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called
visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 700
nanometers.

Characteristics on spectrum:

1. Hue- color or shade of a color

2. Intensity: how much power or strength something has
3. Brightness: the amplitude of light.
4. Complexity: the level of detail or intricacy contained within an image.
5. Saturation: complexity of light (how wide or narrow the range of wavelength)
Demonstration
The eye projects light and pictures/ images onto the retina. Cone cells then send signals to the visual
cortex. Each cell is specific to each color. The primary ones are red, green, and blue. If you couldn’t see
any colors / the shape of the number in the circles that means you’re colorblind or don’t have normal
color vision. Your retinal cone cells respond differently than normal. If you saw most/ all of the numbers
you’re considered to have normal vision.

https://enchroma.com/pages/test

At home demonstration link:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/visionaryeyecare.wordpress.com/2008/08/04/eye-test-find-your-
blind-spot-in-each-eye/amp/
Link to website
https://visionsensationproject.weebly.com/