Sight. Visual perception is the ability to interpret the surrounding environment using light in the visible spectrum reflected by the objects in the environment. This is different from visual acuity, which refers to how clearly a person sees. A person can have problems with visual perceptual processing even if they have 20/20 vision. The resulting perception is also known as visual perception, eyesight, sight, or vision. The various physiological components involved in vision are referred to collectively as the visual system, and are the focus of much research in linguistics, psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and molecular biology, collectively referred to as vision science. Visual system In humans, and a number of other mammals light enters the eye through the cornea which then the lens focuses light onto the light-sensitive membrane in the back of the eye, called the retina. The retina serves as a transducer for the conversion of light into neuronal signals. This transduction is achieved by specialized photoreceptive cells of the retina, also known as the rods and cones, which detect the photons of light and respond by producing neural impulses. These signals are transmitted by the optic nerve, from the retina upstream to central ganglia in the brain. the lateral geniculate nucleus, which transmits the information to the visual cortex. Signals from the retina also travel directly from the retina to the superior colliculus. The lateral geniculate nucleus sends signals to primary visual cortex, also called striate cortex. Extrastriate cortex, also called visual association cortex is a set of cortical structures, that receive information from striate cortex, as well as each other. Recent descriptions of visual association cortex describe a division into two functional pathways, a ventral and a dorsal pathway. This conjecture is known as the two streams hypothesis. The human visual system is generally believed to be sensitive to visible light in the range of wavelengths between 370 and 730 nanometers of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, some research suggests that humans can perceive light in wavelengths down to 340 nanometers, especially the young. The major problem in visual perception is that what people see is not simply a translation of retinal stimuli. Thus people interested in perception have long struggled to explain what visual processing does to create what is actually seen. There were two major ancient Greek schools, providing a primitive explanation of how vision works. The first was the emission theory which maintained that vision occurs when rays emanate from the eyes and are intercepted by visual objects. If an object was seen directly it was by means of rays coming out of the eyes and again falling on the object. A refracted image was, however, seen by means of rays as well, which came out of the eyes, traversed through the air, and after refraction, fell on the visible object which was sighted as the result of the movement of the rays from the eye. This theory was championed by scholars like Euclid and Ptolemy and their followers. The second school advocated the so-called intro-mission approach which sees vision as coming from something entering the eyes representative of the object. With its main propagators Aristotle, Galen and their followers, this theory seems to have some contact with modern theories of what vision really is, but it remained only a speculation lacking any experimental foundation. Both schools of thought relied upon the principle that like is only known by like, and thus upon the notion that the eye was composed of some internal fire which interacted with the external fire of visible light and made vision possible. Plato makes this assertion in his dialogue Timaeus, as does Aristotle, in his De Sensu. Alhazen carried out many investigations and experiments on visual perception, extended the work of Ptolemy on binocular vision, and commented on the anatomical works of Galen. He was the first person to explain that vision occurs when light bounces on an object and then is directed to one's eyes. Leonardo da Vinci is believed to be the first to recognize the special optical qualities of the eye. He wrote The function of the human eye. was described by a large number of authors in a certain way. But I found it to be completely different. His main experimental finding was that there is only a distinct and clear vision at the line of sight, the optical line that ends at the fovea. Although he did not use these words literally he actually is the father of the modern distinction between foveal and peripheral vision.
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