Visual perception

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 (for example '20/20 vision'). A person can have problems with visual perceptual processing even if he/she has 20/20 vision. The resulting perception is also known as visual perception, eyesight, sight, or vision (adjectival form: visual, optical, or ocular). 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. 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 (0.00000037 to 0.00000073 meters) of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, some research suggests that humans can perceive light in wavelengths down to 340 nanometers (UV-A), especially the young. The major problem in visual perception is that what people see is not simply a translation of retinal stimuli (i.e., the image on the retina). 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.