How does the visual system function?
How does the visual system function?
The visual system incorporates the sense organ called the eye and several parts of the central nervous system to provide the organisms with a sense of sight. It helps the organism to build a representation of its surrounding environment.
Light falls on the object and gets reflected. This reflected light enters the eye, and via the lens, it is projected on to the retina. The photoreceptor cells at the retina called the rod and cone cells function as a transducer and convert the light stimulus into electrical impulses, which are carried to the brain through the optic canal via the optic nerves. On reaching the optic chiasm, the nerve fibres decussate, branch and terminate at different regions in the brain. Majority of the nerve fibers terminate at the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), a visual relay centre in the thalamus. It transfers this information to the visual cortex lying in the primary cerebral cortex's occipital lobe for processing. Visual cortex functions in spatial recognition, movement, shape, size, global motion, and the object's colour changes.
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