eli5: How does vision work

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Specially for humans, not sure if it’s different for different animals

In: Biology

2 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Light hits your cornea, or the lens of your eye. This focuses the light on the back of your eye (I else’s you have bad vision, in which case it could mean your cornea isn’t shaped correctly)

On the back of your eye there are a bunch of special photoreceptor cells called rods and cones that get activated by the light hitting them. And these then send electrical signals to the brain.

The brain then interprets the electrical signals as what we see.

For how the brains goes from changing electrical signals to the image we actually see, our sense of sight, we have absolutely no idea and scientists are still working to try to figure it out. We are pretty sure this happens towards the back of the brain, so we know a generally area, but we don’t really know HOW.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Light hits your cornea, the lens bends the light, sending it through your pupil to hit the back of your eyeball on the retina. Special photoreceptive cells in your retina, called rods and cones, react to the light, generating electrical signals that travel through your optic nerve to your brain where it compiles the information and creates the perception of sight.