Rethinking the Process of Vision

I was asked if I know of Karl Pribram’s proposal that consciousness is dependent on holographic structure and is therefore, in some sense, related to the vision process. I have certainly been aware of these ideas for years but felt that they were incomplete in not providing any proposal for a possible mechanism as to how this might actually be effected. I believe that this is the reason why Pribram’s ideas although receiving a great deal of notoriety have  languished.

It occurs to me that this situation is similar Edwin Land’s work on color vision where he identified the fundamental nature of this process but, with the paradigm for light interaction available to him in 1955 could go no further in explaining the mechanism involved. I would believe that Pribram’s prescient ideas about holography are in the same vein.

I believe that I provide a mechanism for a holographic content to the vision process in my explanation for light interaction with the retina. This lies in the, to me unassailable,  geometric proof that the retina forms the Fourier plane of the optics of the eye….and….. the Fourier equation requires that both light intensity and phase be encoded…and these are the necessary elements for any holographic interpretation of vision.

I had not really thought about a holographic interpretation  of vision until chancing upon a reference to the original paper of Gabor first describing the principle of holography. The quote from this reference that caught my attention:

 “Gabor also considered only the case where the illuminating wave also serves as a reference wave”.

Axial holography! I had believed from at least a cursory overview of the holographic process and that generation of a hologram required a separate “reference beam”.  What struck me in the Gabor paper was that  in his initial  experimentation   he used a portion of the incident beam itself to act as a wave reference in a holographic construction. I have discussed this in a previous Comment that the reader might review.

Might a holographic interpretation of vision be developed using my light interaction explanation? The necessary elements seem to be there.

GCH

Tucson, AZ

9.7.08

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 7th, 2008 at 8:00 am and is filed under Running Commentary . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.