Overview of the visual pathway to the 1* visual cortex and processing of information.

1. Overview of Visual Processing Dorsal pathway: Where?
To post. parietal cortex
The retina:
MOTION (+ motion illusions)
rods and cones
horizontal cells 1* visual
bipolar cells Lateral geniculate cortex:
amacrine cells nucleus of thalamus: V1
V2
ganglion cells LGN (optic radiation) V3
(onto optic nerve) V4
V5
light V6
http://www.circadian.org/biorhyt.html V7
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Two-streams_hypothesis
Ventral pathway: What?
To inferior temporal cortex
Colour and form (+ illusory
contours)
Bipolar cells Ganglion cells LGN Visual Cortex
Midget Parvocellular cells 4 parvocellular layers spiny stellate neurons What?
majority, smaller receptive fields, 4th layer of sublayer A
slower, colour vision, sustained response = 4C-alpha, simple cell?
Amacrine?+? Magnocellular cells 2 magnocellular layers spiny stellate neurons, Where?
larger receptive fields, convergence, 4th layer of sublayer B
faster, more sensitive, detect motion, transient reponse = 4C-beta, complex cell?

2. Cortical columns
cortical column (somatosensory):
a vertical column of the cortical layers that has a near identical receptive field, but each layer corresponds to a different modality.
orientation column:
is a vertical column in which each layer displays the same pinwheels:
orientational preference for the stimulus, every 1mm a different orientation organisation of orientation columns
ocular dominance:
tiger stripe:
0.5mm wide cortical strips that prefer input from either retina
organisation of ocular dominance columns
hypercolumn:
1-2mm^2 cortical column responding to all orientations of a stimulus, both retinae and performing colour analysis of differently sized visu
fields
amblyopia:
disorder of the visual system resulting from a deficiency in optic information from one eye reaching the cortex, which results in cortical
development that makes it impossible to recover the function
http://www.pnas.org/content/102/11/4158/F2.expansion.html
http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Consciousness_Studies/
The_Neuroscience_Of_Consciousness