Light Detection on the Retina and Image Formation are Two Separate Processes

An interesting research initiative at the University of Leipzig focuses on the convergence of technologies from microscopic to nanoscopic structures. I had concluded that such a dual view must be considered in the nanoscopic processes involved in light interaction with the human retina and the entirely separate microscopic process (based on the morphology or organization of retinal receptors) that the eye uses to form an image. I have discussed this subject in my past comments pointing out how the concept of a ‘color-sensing pigment interaction’, no matter how accurately described, would in any way go on to describe how an image is formed ….they are two entirely different subjects in different spatial domains!

One should stop and think how imprecise it is to say that a ‘cone receptor detects color’! Beyond the improper use of the term ‘color’ (often discussed in this work), this statement completely disregards any connection to how the eye forms an image leaving it to the reader’s imagination how this might happen….and leaving the false notion that the eye is some sort of ‘camera’. And yet this statement is repeated over and over in the literature of vision until it has become an unthinking mantra.

But…..the processes of light interaction with retinal receptors and the subsequent formation of the visual image are two separate subjects

Again for the record, my explanation is that, nanoscopically, the retina evolved to detect light as an electromagnetic wave in ‘optical antennas’ formed in the spaces between receptors subsequently transmitting the energy absorbed to quantum confined electron rhodopsin sites within each receptor. The image formation process based on the long accepted (Osterberg) , but never explained, microscopic arrangement of cones and rods that form the retina is shown to lie in the Fourier domain…..i.e., via a 2-D Fourier image transforming process.

GCH