• Question: how do we see through our eyes?

    Asked by 299dech52 to Wil, Mary Jane, James, Diana, Andy on 9 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Diana Kornbrot

      Diana Kornbrot answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      light comes through the lens at the front of the eye nad hits cells at the back of the eye [on the retina]. those cells are connected to nerves and send signals down the nerves to the visual cortex part of the brain [at the back]. patterns of the ell firings in the brain are then recognized as objects

    • Photo: Mary Jane Spiller

      Mary Jane Spiller answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      How we see things is surprisingly complex for something that seems to happen so easily without any effort. As Diana says, lightwaves enter our eyes through the pupils in our eyes, and then goes through to the retina (back part of eye) and then signals are sent along the nerves to the back part of the brain, and from their it is further processed in different parts of the brain. For example, scientists have found a part of the brain that seems to specialise in processing faces – if this bit gets damaged then people aren’t able to recognise faces any more, even though their eyesight is perfectly normal otherwise. So they can’t recognise family or friends faces – they only recognise them by things like the sound of their voice, or by remembering what they’re wearing that day. This condition is called prosopagnosia – face blindness.

    • Photo: Wilhelmiina Toivo

      Wilhelmiina Toivo answered on 9 Mar 2017:

      The others have already answered this pretty well! 🙂 As they said, light comes through your eyes and the back of your eye then sends the signals to your brain. There are many parts of your brain that process things we see, but mostly they are at the back of your head which is quite interesting given your eyes are at the front! 🙂

    • Photo: James Gudgeon

      James Gudgeon answered on 10 Mar 2017:

      I think you should also ask – how do we see through our brains?
      The information that is detected by our eyes only forms a small part of what we actually ‘perceive’ – the brain fills in lots of gaps. For instance, the spot where the retina forms the optic nerve in the eye, there are no light receptors. So we are essentially blind in one specific spot. But our brain fills in the gap with what it thinks it should see… What else do we see that isn’t really there? Google optic illusions for lots of examples of how our brain ‘sees’ things compared to how they really are!

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