Perception

Light, Optics, and Early

Vision

Bas Rokers
Psychology, Center for Brain and Health
New York University Abu Dhabi
 Review

• Philosophy: Representative realism

• Psychophysics

• Basic Methods

• Methods of constant stimuli, limits, and

adjustment
Philosophical position of this course:

• Empiricism - knowledge from senses

• Representative Realism - indirect knowledge of
world, via the senses
• Materialism - only one kind of stuff (matter)
• Functionalism - understanding the “function” of
the sensory systems is all that we need to know to
“understand” them.
Fechner’s law
Stephen’s Power Law
Test yourself: at which intensity are changes most detectable?

A B C
For this stimulus/sensation relationship, which stimulus changes are most
detectable?

A B C
How to measure perception?
müller-lyer illusion
perception - alan stocker © 2009
 “percept”

“percept” is internal

perception - alan stocker © 2009

 f (x)
x

blabla

perception - alan stocker © 2009

Psychophysics

• detection (yes/no)
• discrimination (e.g., bigger than)
• estimation (report the stimulus exactly)

All provide indirect measure of internal mental state!

Detection
perfect threshold
Detection
perfect threshold noise
Psychometric function
Method of constant stimuli
 Method of limits

sweep low to high

Method of adjustment

“adjust until you can just barely see it”

Signal detection theory: A psychophysical theory that
quantifies the response of an observer to the
presentation of a signal in the presence of noise

Presentation of signal ->

Noise!
Sensory stimulation ->

Noise!
Perceptual interpretation ->

Noise!
Observer’s response

http://epsych.msstate.edu/deliberate/sig_det/index.html
Stormy weather Quiet sea Sonar upgrade

Herzog M.H., Francis G., Clarke A. (2019)

Figure 1.16 Detecting a stimulus using the signal detection theory (SDT) approach (Part 2)

Neural activation (spikes) Neural activation (spikes)

Figure 1.17 Sensitivity to a stimulus: The separation between the distributions of response to noise
alone and to signal plus noise

Neural activation (spikes) Neural activation (spikes)

Neural activation (spikes)

Figure 1.18 For a fixed d , all you can do is change the pattern of your errors by shifting the
response criterion

Neural activation (spikes) Neural activation (spikes)

Neural activation (spikes)

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Signal detection theory

 Hit: Stimulus is presented and observer responds

“Yes”
 Miss: Stimulus is presented and observer
responds “No”
 False alarm: Stimulus is not presented and
observer responds “Yes”
 Correct rejection: Stimulus is not presented and
observer responds “No”
Signal Detection Theory Terms to know:

“noise” distribution: values arising when stimulus not

present

“signal” distribution: values arising when signal +

noise present

Type I error: rate of “false alarms”, or false positives

Type II error: rate of “misses”, or false negatives

psychometric function: describes probability of saying

“I heard it” as function of stimulus intensity
 Chapter 2:

First steps in Vision

Light: electromagnetic radiation within a narrow energy range
• a wave: can be bent by lenses
• a particle: “photons” - can travel through a vacuum, have fixed
energy that can be emitted/absorbed (quanta)

• Light: A wave; a stream of photons, tiny particles

that each consist of one quantum of energy
Food for thought: Why are we
sensitive to such a narrow range of the
electromagnetic spectrum?

One idea: visible spectrum is the range that

best penetrates water, where our eyes
evolved.

Other solutions are possible:

• bees: ultraviolet light
• pit vipers: infrared light
 What happens to light?

• Absorbed: Energy (e.g., light) that is taken up, and is

not transmitted at all

• Scattered: Energy that is dispersed in an irregular

fashion (most light does this!)
 What happens to light?

• Refracted: Energy that is altered as it passes into

another medium, (e.g., light entering water from the air)

• Re ected: Energy that is redirected when it strikes a

surface
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Light Physics

What it all looks like. (Messy!)

• each point in space has light from all angles passing through it
cornea (not visible)

pupil

iris sclera
the eye (viewed from above)
• Cornea: The transparent “window” into the eyeball
(carries 2/3 of eye’s total refractive power)
• Aqueous humor: watery uid behind cornea
• Crystalline lens: allows changing focus
• Pupil: The dark circular opening at the center of the iris
in the eye, where light enters the eye
• Vitreous humor: transparent uid that lls main
cavity of the eye (gel-like; may contain “ oaters”)
• Retina: light-sensitive membrane in the back of the eye
that contains rods and cones.
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fi
 Optics
• Branch of physics that studies the behavior
and properties of light
• Earliest theories posited that to see (1) the
eyes emit rays of light, or (2) physical
matter enters the eye
• Modern optics started with the theory that a
surface re ects light in any straight line that
can be drawn from that surface (Ibn al-
Haytham, or Alhazen in the west)
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Problem: How do you form an image?

perception - alan stocker ©

Image formation with a lens

Goal is to focus the

light rays emanating
from a single point
to a single point on
the imaging surface
 lenses

converging

diverging
 Refraction:
necessary to focus light rays, carried out by lens
• Accommodation: process in which the lens changes
its shape, altering its refractive power
• Emmetropia: no refractive error
Figure 2.3 Optics of the human eye

(near-sightedness)
(far-sightedness)

• too fat / powerful

• too thin / not enough
• eye is too long
accommodation
• eye is too short
 normal eye - accomodation
min max

far away
object
Good

near
object

Good

(courtesy ben backus)

perception - alan stocker © 2009

myopic (near-sighted) eye
min max

far away
object

near
object

Good

Cannot stretch lens thin enough to focus far away objects

perception - alan stocker © 2009
hyperopic (farsighted) eye
min max

far away
object
Good

near
object

Cannot relax lens fat enough to focus near objects

perception - alan stocker © 2009
The Eye: other problems of refraction

• Astigmatism: A visual defect caused by

different curving in different directions of
one or more of the refractive surfaces of
the eye, usually the cornea
Figure 2.4 Fan chart for astigmatism

• if you have astigmatism, some lines will appear to

have lower contrast
 Camera analogy for the eye
• Aperture (F-stop) = Iris/pupil. Regulates
the amount of light coming into the eye

• Focus = Lens.
Changes shape to change focus

• Film = Retina.
Records the image
Eyes That See Light
Using the ophthalmoscope, doctors can view the
back surface of patients’ eyes, called the fundus

Optic disk
Macula
blind spot demo
Figure 2.7 Photomicrograph of the retina
 Light has to pass through all the other stuff in
our eye before getting to photoreceptors!

Cephalopods (squid, octopus): did it right.

- Photoreceptors in innermost layer, no blind spot!

Debate:
• accident of evolution?
• better solution to have photoreceptors near
blood supply?
Retinal Information Processing

Photoreceptors: Cells in the retina that initially

transduce light energy into neural energy
• Rods: Photoreceptors that are specialized for night
vision
 Respond well in low lighting
 Do not process color
• Cones: Photoreceptors that are specialized for
daylight vision, fine visual acuity and color
 Respond best with lots of light
Transduction
Conversion of energy from one form to another
(e.g., “light” into “electrical pulses”)
Figure 2.8 Rods and cones
Retinal Information Processing

Rods and cones are so named because of their

respective shapes
Capturing a photon: When light hits the eye, the
process of photo-activation begins
• Rods and cones have special molecules that
contain a protein, called an opsin, that changes its
shape when struck by a photon
Retinal Information Processing

Light passes through several layers of cells before

reaching the rods and cones
• Light activates a photoreceptor, which then signals
the horizontal and bipolar cells that synapse with it
• Bipolar cells are connected to amacrine cells and
ganglion cells
• Ganglion cells have axons that leave the retina
through the optic disc (blind spot)
Retinal Information Processing

The distribution of rods and cones is not constant

over the retina
Cones process color; rods do not
This means that you have very poor color vision in
your periphery. It may seem as if your entire field
of view has full-resolution color, but it does not
Figure 2.9 Photoreceptor density across the retina
Figure 2.10 The “rule of thumb”

The rule of thumb: If you hold your thumb out at arms length,
the width of your thumbnail is about 2 degrees of visual angle
Retinal Information Processing

Vision scientists measure the size of visual stimuli

by how large an image appears on the retina
rather than by how large the object is
The standard way to measure retinal size is in terms
of “degrees of visual angle”
In summary: The visual angle of an object is a
function of both its actual size and distance from
the observer
Figure 2.5 Fundus of the right eye of a human
Figure 2.18 Fundus of a patient with retinitis pigmentosa
The Man Who Could Not See Stars
• Visual field tests for someone with normal vision
compared with someone with retinitis pigmentosa
 Summary

• The nature of light

• Optics

• Anatomy of the eye