Retinal Organization….
February 27th, 2006 | No Comments »When viewed from this new perspective the retina is seen to be organized according to geometric principles to detect three optical wavelengths refracted by the chromatic aberration (or, what has heretofore been termed an aberration) of the lens and structure of the eye. This organization is simple and geometrically precise. But….why only three wavelengths? Wouldn’t nature, to detect the full panoply of hues that we term color, have configured the retina to detect all wavelengths within the visible band? Employing the geometric principle of the concept, this would require a large number of different receptor diameters logically arrayed from the fovea to the retinal angle corresponding to the short wavelength limit of the band. But..nature seemed to hit upon a simpler scheme based on only two diameters of receptors – the cones and rods. By intermeshing these two diameters an array results that detects three separate bands but in a unique manner – as the brightness or intensity profile of each band thus providing a unique principle of geometrically distilling the intensity of each band from the light detection process…for subsequent synthesis of the full color signal …..as Edwin Land saw!
