Anatomy
Visual System
The eye is a sensory organ, that:
- receives light rays reflected from objects around us
- focuses an image of those objects within the eye
- creates sensory information from image light patterns
- transmits the sensory information to the brain,
so, we can "see" the world of objects around us.
The structures that contribute to the eye's ability to focus images include the cornea, crystalline lens, and retina.
- Light rays first pass through the cornea, which acts as a refracting and protective membrane.
- The crystalline lens acts as the focusing agent, changing shape so that images are focused on sensors in the retina.
- Optic nerves within the retina collect sensory information about the image and transmit it to the brain for interpretation as sight.
Visual information is by far the richest and most important sensory information we receive about our world. With our eyes, we take in at a glance colour, form, texture, movement, direction, size, and location. We can distinguish tens of thousands of individual faces and make out a small object from a great distance.
All of the richness of the visual world comes to us through the eye. Its marvellously complex neural circuitry and finely regulated biochemistry maintain a flow of information over extraordinarily wide ranges of illumination.
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