Eye
Eyes are organs that detect light and convert it into electro-chemical impulses in neurons. The simplest photoreceptor cells in conscious vision connect light to movement. In higher organisms the eye is a complex optical system which collects light from the surrounding environment, regulates its intensity through a diaphragm, focuses it through an adjustable assembly of lenses to form an image, converts this image into a set of electrical signals, and transmits these signals to the brain through complex neural pathways that connect the eye via the optic nerve to the visual cortex and other areas of the brain. Eyes with resolving power have come in ten fundamentally different forms, and 96% of animal species possess a complex optical system. Image-resolving eyes are present in molluscs, chordates and arthropods.
The simplest "eyes", such as those in microorganisms, do nothing but detect whether the surroundings are light or dark, which is sufficient for the entrainment of circadian rhythms. From more complex eyes, retinal photosensitive ganglion cells send signals along the retinohypothalamic tract to the suprachiasmatic nuclei to effect circadian adjustment.
Read more about Eye: Overview, Evolution, Types of Eye, Relationship To Life Requirements, Visual Acuity, Perception of Colors, Rods and Cones, Pigmentation
Famous quotes containing the word eye:
“There are a thousand unnoticed openings ... which let a penetrating eye at once into a man’s soul; and I maintain ... that a man of sense does not lay down his hat in coming into a room,—or take it up in going out of it, but something escapes, which discovers him.”
—Laurence Sterne (1713–1768)
“The reader uses his eyes as well as or instead of his ears and is in every way encouraged to take a more abstract view of the language he sees. The written or printed sentence lends itself to structural analysis as the spoken does not because the reader’s eye can play back and forth over the words, giving him time to divide the sentence into visually appreciated parts and to reflect on the grammatical function.”
—J. David Bolter (b. 1951)
“For the Eye altering alters all;
The Senses roll themselves in fear
And the flat Earth becomes a Ball.”
—William Blake (1757–1827)