Physiological Module 5.2

What is strabismus?

A failure of the two eyes to focus on the same thing at the same time

Astigmatism refers to the

Asymmetric curvature of eyes

What is the shape of the receptive field to which a simple cell in the primary visual cortex responds?

Bar in a particular orientation

Parvocellular neurons most likely receive input from

Bipolar cells that receive input from cones

What type of cell responds to a pattern of light in a particular orientation anywhere within its large receptive field, regardless of the exact location of the stimulus?

Complex

Which cell responds most strongly to a stimulus moving perpendicular to its axis?

Complex

In foveal vision,

Each ganglion cell is excited by a single cone

___ respond to a particular feature of a stimulus

Feature detectors

___ cell axons makeup the optic nerve

Ganglion

In the vertebrate retina, which cells are responsible for lateral inhibition?

Horizontal cells

Branches of the optic nerve go directly to what areas of the brain?

Lateral geniculate and superior colliculus

What is responsible for sharpening contrast at visual borders?

Lateral inhibition

Cutting the left optic nerve in front of the optic chiasm would result in blindness in the

Left eye

The ability to detect movement better than color in our peripheral vision is largely due to

Magnocellular neurons in the periphery

Axons from lateral geniculate extend to which area of the cerebral cortex?

Occipital lobe

The optic nerves from the right and left eye initially meet at the

Optic chiasm

Being able to detect fine details of a color painting would depend most on which type of ganglion cells?

Parvocellular

The receptive field of a receptor is the

Point in space from which light strikes the receptor

The ___ of any neuron in the visual system is the area of the visual field that excites or inhibits it

Receptive field

V1 neurons would be most strongly activated by viewing

Repeating stripes on a flag

In depth perception, different views are received by each eye, depending on the distance of the object being viewed. What is this called?

Retinal disparity

Stereoscopic depth perception requires the brain to detect

Retinal disparity

Horizontal cells receive their input from ___, and they send output to ___

Rods and cones; bipolar cells

The primary visual cortex is also known as the

Striate cortex

The lateral geniculate nucleus is part of the

Thalamus

In the visual system, the ___ and ___ constantly feed information back and forth

Thalamus; cortex

Blindsight refers to

The ability to localize visual objects within an apparently blind visual field

The primary visual cortex sends its information

To area V2

Where does the optic nerve send most of its information?

To the lateral geniculate

What would be the likely outcome of a person who was blind at birth, and had vision restored later in life by the removal of cataracts (clouded lenses)?

Trouble describing the shapes of objects

Cortical area ___ appears to be where conscious visual perception occurs

V1

What is one way to determine whether a given cell in the primary visual cortex is "simple" or "complex"?

Whether it can respond equally to lines in more than one location