Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to Starting with the discovery in the 1950s of the center-surround receptive fields of retinal ganglion cells, it became clear that visual processing in the eye and brain…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to Visual processing continues in several cortical regions adjacent to V1 referred to as extrastriate cortex (“extra” means outside of V1). Most of the extrastriate areas have a retinotopic map…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to From the retina, the main visual pathway for conscious perception goes to the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus (LGN), after which LGN neurons project to the primary visual cortex.…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to In many ways, the millions of rods and cones spread across the retina are like the pixels of a digital camera. Each photoreceptor reports on the number…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to In this section, we will explore the retina, and meet its five major types of neurons. We will see that vision begins with specialized sensory receptors, the…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to In this section, we will meet the range of the electromagnetic energy spectrum that we call “light,” and see how the structure of the eye provides an…
Figure 6.1 Vision begins in the retina, a layered structure where photoreceptors absorb light to start a chain of activity that ends in the brain. Image Credit: Wei Li, National Eye Institute, National Institutes of Health. Public domain Chapter Outline 6.1 An Overview…
Gastrulation and Formation of the Neural Tube (Neurulation) Growth and Development of the Early Brain Brain segmentation is controlled at the level of gene expression and can be subject to disease through both abnormal gene expression and environmental exposures.…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to Early embryonic development provides the foundational unit of a brain with immature connections, but sensory cues can dramatically alter how brain maturation occurs. These sensory cues play…
Learning Objectives By the end of this section, you should be able to The creation of neurons and glia is only the first step in creating a functional brain. For neurons to function in meaningful ways, they have to connect…