PSYC 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 42: Color Vision, Cerebral Cortex, Postcentral Gyrus

• School: McGill University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: PSYC 100
• Professor: Jens C Pruessner

Document Summary

Electrical signals are generated by the photoreceptors in the retina. Other cells in the retina (bipolar, amacrine, horizontal) perform on those impulses a series of sophisticated computations that help the visual system process the incoming information. At the optic chiasm half the axons in the optic nerves cross. The 1st synapse of the majority of the ganglion cells lies within the visual areas of the thalamus, and visual information is transmitted from there to the primary visual cortex, cortical areas in the occipital lobe. The pathway from the retina to this region carries all the information that we consciously experience as seeing. One of the most popular receptive fields is a circle that consists of a center region and a surrounding region. Light directed toward the center region causes the cell to become more active, whereas light directed toward the surrounding region inhibits the cell"s firing.