|
How do you see the world around you?
You open your eyes and there it is: your room, your desk,
the pictures on the walls, and the trees outside your window.
When you take a look at the world, here’s
what’s happening: Light is bouncing off the pictures, the trees, and all the things out there in the world. Some
of that light gets into your eye. This light shines through the cornea, the tough clear covering over the front of your eye,
and then through the pupil, the dark hole in the center of your iris, the
colored part of your eye. Your eye’s lens
focuses this light to make an image on your retina, a thin layer of light-sensitive cell that lines the back of your eyeball.
The light-sensitive cells of the retina signal the brain, and the brain creates a mental image. Finally, you see the
world out there.
Your eye doesn’t just passively record the image it receives. Working together, your eyes
and brain decide what to see and how to see it. They fill in gaps in your visual field, taking limited information and creating
a complete picture. They interpret the limited and distorted images that they receive and try to make sense of the world out
there, often using past experience as a guide. They constantly filter out and ignore extraneous information.
|
