1/28/2004   slide 9
The Retina
•“Mammalian lenses—look like onions. Hard to imagine more crappy optics.” Michael Tarr
•Retina has 100+ million photoreceptors
•Photons changed to electro-chemical signals, go through additional layers of cells + processing
•Only ~1million nerves leave the retina:
100/1 data compression
•“The computing power of your retina dwarfs the most advanced super computers.” [Hoffman 1998] p66
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Human Retina. Image courtesy Janet Sparrow
Neural retina from adult human http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/neurobeh/vision-grant/
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http://users.rcn.com/jkimball.ma.ultranet/BiologyPages/V/Vision.html
•To electrochemical signals (true?)

•Neural retina from adult human, showing how nuclear laminae alternate with layers of processes. Photoreceptor cells are at the bottom of the figure. Image courtesy Janet Sparrow  http://cpmcnet.columbia.edu/dept/neurobeh/vision-grant/

•Eye diagram: The retina is covered with rods and cones, light-receptors that send electrical impulses through optic nerve fibers and to the brain.  http://www.visionweb.com/content/consumers/dev_consumerarticles.jsp?RID=36