Topics addressed in the lecture:

•Structure and major cell types of the retina

•Major photoreceptor types

•Encoding of spatial information

•Encoding of color information

•Ganglion cell receptive fields

•Dark adaptation

•Luminance vs. contrast perception

 

Examples for question you should be able to answer:

•What is retinotopy?

•Explain how the feed-forward connectivity and lateral interaction in the retina leads to on-center ganglion cell receptive fields

•How does the eye minimize the trade-off between dynamic range and sensitivity?

 

Important concepts:

•Receptive field

•Retinotopy

•Visual acuity

•Center-surround antagonism

•Operating range versus sensitivity

•Hierarchical vs. parallel processing

•‘Local’ vs. ‘coarse’ coding