Imran A.

Sajid

Imran Ahmad Sajid, T.A., ISSG, UOP

Imran A. Sajid

Before you finish reading this sentence, approximately one hundred billion (100,000,000,000) operations will have been completed inside your eyes. However fantastic it may seem, you possess an example (two, in fact) of the Universe's ultimate technology. No scientist has ever come close to fully grasping it, let alone inventing anything remotely similar.

Imran A. Sajid

Whatever you have in your life is meaningful through your sensesvision and others. Your family, your house, your office, your friends and everything else in your surroundings, you quickly identify thanks to your vision. Without eyes, you could never get a quick, complete sense of everything that's happening around you. Without them, you could never imagine colors, forms, scenes, human faces, or what the word beauty means. But you do have eyes, and thanks to them, you can now read these printed words before you.

Imran A. Sajid

Nor does the act of vision cost you very much effort. To see an object, all you have to do is to turn your gaze at it. You don't need to bother giving "project, capture, and analyze" orders to your eyes, the components inside them, the optical nerves running to the back of your brain, nor to the brain itself.

Imran A. Sajid

You need only look, just like the rest of the billions of creatures who have ever lived on our planet. Without having to work out the optical measurements, your eye's lens can focus onto distant objects. Without needing to accurately compute the precise contractions of various muscles surrounding the lens, you only desire to see, and within a fraction of a second, that process is carried out for you.

Imran A. Sajid

Imran A. Sajid

Structure of the Presentation

A. B. C. D. E. F. Light: The Stimulus of Vision Structure of the Human Eye Colour Vision and Colour Blindness Theories of Colour Blindness Recap Review Question

Imran A. Sajid

Light: The Stimulus of Vision

Light is the physical energy that stimulates the Light is:the energy producing a sensation of brightness that makes eye. seeing possible. or, energy capable of producing visual sensation. Light travels in waves. Measured in wavelengths. The difference in wavelength and frequency makes different types of colours.

Imran A. Sajid

All light rays emit unique waves.

Wavelength: of a wave is the distance between two consecutive wave peaks.

The distance between adjacent wave crests is called wavelength. It is measured in nanometers (1 billionth of a meter)

Imran A. Sajid

Frequency: the number of wavelengths that pass by a certain point in space in a given amount of time.
The number of times the wave oscillates (swing/fluctuate) each second is called frequency This value is usually measured in cycles per second, or hertz (Hz).
Wavelength

Frequency

Imran A. Sajid

Visual Spectrum: The range of wavelengths that humans are sensitive to.

Imran A. Sajid

Color, physical phenomenon of light. or Sensation of light induced in eye by waves of a certain frequency. e.g.,
Violet: Highest Frequency, Shortest Wavelength (400) Red: Highest Wavelength, Shortest Frequency (700) Green: Human eyes respond best to green light at 550 nm, which is also approximately the brightest color in sunlight at Earths surface

Imran A. Sajid

Vision begins with light rays bouncing off the surface of objects. These reflected light rays enter the eye and are transformed into electrical signals. Millions of signals per second leave the eye via the optic nerve and travel to the visual area of the brain. Brain cells then decode the signals into images, providing us with sight.

Structure of the Eye:

1.From Cornea to Retina
Cornea
Transparent protective coating over the front of the eye

Imran A. Sajid

Pupil
Small dark hole in center of the iris through which light enters the eye. The size of the pupil depends on the amount of light in the environment. The dimmer the surroundings, the more the pupil opens in order to allow more light to enter.

Iris
Colored part of the eye, which ranges in humans from a light blue to a dark brown

Imran A. Sajid

Lens
Located directly behind the pupil. Acts to bend the rays of light so that they are properly Focuses onto the retina The lens focuses light by changing its own thickness, a process called accommodation. Distant objects require a flat lens Close objects require a rounded lens to view best

Retina
Ultimate destination of an image in the eye. A thin layer of nerve cells at the back of the eye ball. Here electromagnetic energy of light is converted into messages that the brain can use.

Fovea
Center of the visual field. A particularly sensitive region of the retina.

Imran A. Sajid

2. From Eye to Brain:

2.1. Receptor Cells

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Receptor Cells are the cells in the retina that are sensitive to light Visual receptors are called rods and cones.

Imran A. Sajid

2.1. Receptor Cells

Rods

Long and cylindrical About 120 million rods Respond to light and dark Related to vision in dimly lit situations Very sensitive to light Largely insensitive to colour and details Provide our night vision and peripheral vision Not found in the very centre of fovea

Cones
Short, thick and tapered About 8 million cones Respond to sharply focused perception of color as well as light and dark Work best in bright light Found mainly in the fovea

Imran A. Sajid

Rods

Cone

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Dark Adaptation
Increased sensitivity of rods and cones in darkness

The speed at which dark adaptation occurs is a result of the rate of change in the chemical composition of the rods and cones. Cones reach their greatest level of adaptation in just a few minutes. Rods take close to thirty minutes to reach maximum level.

Imran A. Sajid

2.2. Receptor Cells

Bipolar cells
Receive input from receptor cells
3. Now, the bipolar cells transmit this information to the ganglion cells

2. The to rods and cones, which are sensitive to light, respond by transmitting information to the bipolar cells

Ganglion cells
Receive input from cells

1. Light passes between the ganglion cells and the bipolar cells, reaching bipolar cones at the rods and back of retina

Blind spot

Rods Ganglion Cell

Cone

gather together forming the Each ganglion cell gathers information optic nerve which transmits the messages from both eyes to the from a group of rods and cones in a brain, which are interpreted as particular area of the eye, and compares the amount of light entering the center sight.

Bipolar Cell Area where axons of ganglion cells leave the 4. The axons of the ganglion cells eye

of that area with the amount of light in the area around it.

Optic Nerve

Imran A. Sajid

3. Sending Message to the Brain

Optic nerve
Made up of axons of ganglion cells carries neural messages from each eye to brain

Optic chiasm
Point where part of each optic nerve crosses to the other side of the brain

Imran A. Sajid

Imran A. Sajid

Visual CortexPlace for Ultimate processing of visual images Feature DetectionMany neurons in the cortex are extraordinarily specialized, being activated only by visual stimuli of a particular shape or pattern. Some cells are activated only by lines of a particular width, shape, or orientation. Other cells are activated only by moving, as opposed to stationary, stimuli (Hubel & Wiesel, 2004).

Imran A. Sajid

Imran A. Sajid

C. Colour Vision
A person with normal colour vision is capable of distinguishing no less than 7 million different colours (Bruce, Green, & Georgeson, 1997). Not all people are able to see full colours. There are certain individuals whose ability to perceive color is quite limitedthe colorblind.

Imran A. Sajid

1. Colour-blindness
Approximately 1 in 50 men or 1 in 5000 women have some form of colorblindness Dichromats
People who are blind to either red-green or blueyellow

Monochromats
People who see no color at all, only shades of light and dark

Imran A. Sajid

look at the photos shown in Figure 6. If you have difficulty seeing the differences among the series of photos, you may well be one of the 1 in 50 men or 1 in 5,000 women who are color-blind.

Imran A. Sajid

For most people with color-blindness, the world looks quite dull. Red fire engines appear yellow, green grass seems yellow, and the three colors of a traffic light all look yellow. In fact, in the most common form of colorblindness, all red and green objects are seen as yellow.

Imran A. Sajid

D. Theories of Colour-Blindness

Why people get colour-blind?

Imran A. Sajid

2.1. Tri-chromatic Theory of Colour Vision

There are three kinds of cones (the receptor cells) in the retina, each of which responds primarily to a specific range of wavelengths.
1. 2. 3. One is most responsive to blue-violet colours, One to green, and The third to yellow-red. e.g. If we look at the blue sky, the blue cones are trigger and the others show less activity.

People get colour-blind because one of three cone systems malfunctions, and colours converted by that range are perceived improperly.

Imran A. Sajid

Limitation of Tri-chromatic Theory

It can not explain the after-images.

Imran A. Sajid

Imran A. Sajid

Imran A. Sajid

What you experienced just now was an afterimage. It occurs because activity in the retina continues even when you are no longer looking at the original picture. However, it also demonstrates that the trichromatic theory does not explain colour vision completely.

Imran A. Sajid

2.2. Opponent Process Theory of Colour Vision

Receptor cells are linked in pairs, working in opposition to each other. Three pairs of color receptors
1. Yellow-blue 2. Red-green 3. Black-white

Members of each pair work in opposition Can explain color afterimages

Both theories of color vision are valid

Imran A. Sajid

If an object reflects light that contains more blue than yellow, it will stimulate the firing of the cells sensitive to blue, simultaneously discouraging or inhibiting the firing of receptor cells sensitive to yellowand the object will appear blue.

Imran A. Sajid

When we stare at the blue in the figure (e.g) our receptor cells of the blue component of the yellow-blue pairing become fatigued and are less able to respond to blue stimuli and vice versa. On the other hand, the receptor cells for the yellow part are not tired, since they are not being stimulated. Therefore, When we look at a white surface, the light reflected off it would normally stimulate both the yellow and the blue receptors equally. But the fatigue of the blue receptors prevents this from happening. They temporarily do not respond to the yellow, which makes the white light appear to be yellow. Because the other colors in the figure do the same thing relative to their specific opponents, the afterimage produces the opponent colorsfor a while. The afterimage lasts only a short time, because the fatigue of the yellow receptors is soon overcome, and the white light begins to be perceived more accurately.

Imran A. Sajid

Both trichromatic mechanism and opponent process theory are at work in allowing us to see colours.

Imran A. Sajid

E. Recap
Eyes are sensitive to light. As the light enters the eye, it passes through the cornea, pupil, and lens and ultimately reaches the retina, where the electromagnetic energy of light is converted into nerve impulses usable by the brain. These impulses leave the eye via the optic nerve. The retina is composed of nerve cells called rods and cones, which play different roles in vision and are responsible for dark adaptation. Humans are able to distinguish about 7 million colours. Colour vision involves two process: trichromatic mechanism and an opponent-processing system.

Imran A. Sajid

F. Review Questions
1. 2. 3. 4. Light entering the eye first passes through the _____, a protective coating? Cornea The structure that converts light into usable neural messages is called the _____? Retina Light is focused on the rear of the eye by the iris... True or false? False: it is focused by the lens The proper sequence of structure that light passes when it enters the eye is the 1_____, 2____, 3____, and 4____. Cornea, pupil, lens, retina ____ theory states that there are three types of cones in the retina, each of which responds primarily to a different colour. Trichromatic Theory

5.

Imran A. Sajid

6. Match each type of visual receptor with its function

a) b) 1. 2. Rods Cones Used for dim light, largely insensitive to colour Detect colour, good in bright light a-1, b-2

Imran A. Sajid

Courtesy: Imran Ahmad Sajid, T.A., ISSG, University of Peshawar. imranahmad131@gmail.com

Imran A. Sajid

Imran A. Sajid

References
Robert S. Feldman. (1999, 2008). Understanding Psychology. [5th & 7th ed.]. McGraw-Hill. "Color." Microsoft Encarta 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Marburger, John H. "Light." Microsoft Encarta 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Jones, Ira Snow. "Eye." Microsoft Encarta 2009 [DVD]. Redmond, WA: Microsoft Corporation, 2008. Oxford English Dictionary Harun Yahya. (2006). Miracles in the Eye. Harun Yahya. eye, human. (2009). Encyclopdia Britannica. Encyclopdia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition. Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica. light. (2009). Encyclopdia Britannica. Encyclopdia Britannica 2009 Student and Home Edition. Chicago: Encyclopdia Britannica.