Perception, imagination, dreaming, and memory-recall process visual information to represent color, distance, and location {vision, sense}. Eyes detect visible light by absorbing light energy to depolarize receptor-cell membrane. Vision analyzes light intensities and frequencies [Wallach, 1963]. Vision can detect color, brightness, contrast, texture, alignment, grouping, overlap, transparency, shadow, reflection, refraction, diffraction, focus, noise, blurriness, smoothness, and haze. Lateral inhibition and spreading excitation help find color categories and space surfaces.
properties: habituation
Vision habituates slowly.
properties: location
Vision can detect location. Vision detects only one source from one location. Vision receives from many locations simultaneously. Vision perceives locations that correspond to physical locations, with same lengths and angles.
properties: synthetic sense
Vision is a synthetic sense. From each space direction/location, vision mixes colors and reduces frequency-intensity spectrum to one color and brightness.
properties: phase
Vision does not use electromagnetic-wave phase differences.
properties: time
Vision is in real time, with a half-second delay.
factors: age
Age gradually yellows eye lenses, and vision becomes more yellow.
factors: material
Air is transparent to visible light and other electromagnetic waves. Water is opaque, except to visible light and electric waves. Skin is translucent to visible light.
nature: language
People see same basic colors, whether language has rudimentary or sophisticated color vocabulary. However, people can learn color information from environment and experiences. Fundamental sense qualities are innate and learned.
nature: perspective
Vision always has viewpoint, which always changes.
relations to other senses
Vision seems unrelated to hearing. Hearing has higher energy level than vision. Hearing has longitudinal mechanical waves, and vision has transverse electric waves. Hearing has ten-octave frequency range, and vision has one-octave frequency range. Hearing uses wave phase differences, but vision does not. Hearing is silent from most spatial locations, but vision displays information from all scene locations. Hearing has sound attack and decay, but vision is so fast that it has no temporal properties. Integrating vision and hearing makes three-dimensional space. Hearing can have interference from more than one source, but vision can have interference from only one source. Hearing hears multiple frequencies, but vision reduces to one quality. Vision mixes sources and frequencies into one sensation, but hearing can detect more than one source and frequency from one location.
Touch provides information about eyes. Vision coordinates with touch. Vision is at eye body surface, but brain feels no touch there.
Vision coordinates with kinesthesia.
Vision seems unrelated to smell and taste.
graphics
Images use vector graphics, such as splines with generalized ellipses or ellipsoids. Splines represent lines and can represent region boundary lines. Spline sets can represent surfaces using parallel lines or line grids, because they divide surfaces into polygons. Closed surfaces can be polygon sets. For simplicity, polygons can be triangles. Perhaps, brain uses ray tracing, but not two-dimensional projection.
Vector graphics represents images using mathematical formulas for volumes, surfaces, and curves (including boundaries) that have parameters, coordinates, orientations, colors, opacities, shading, and surface textures. For example, circle information includes radius, center point, line style, line color, fill style, and fill color. Vector graphics includes translation, rotation, reflection, inversion, scaling, stretching, and skewing. Vector graphics uses logical and set operations and so can extrapolate and interpolate, including filling in.
movement
Vision improves motor control by locating and recognizing objects.
evolution
More than 500 million years ago, animal skin touch-receptor cells evolved photoreceptor protein for dim light, making light-sensitive rod cells. More than 500 million years ago, gene duplication evolved photoreceptor proteins for bright light, and cone cells evolved.
Multiplying light-sensitive cells built a rod-cell region. Rod-cell region sank into skin to make a dimple, so light can enter only from straight-ahead. Dimple became a narrow hole and, like pinholes, allowed image focusing on light-sensitive rod-cell region. Transparent skin covered narrow hole. Transparent-skin thickening created a lens, allowing better light gathering. Muscles controlled lens shape, allowing focusing at different distances.
evolution: beginning
Perhaps, the first vision was for direct sunlight, fire, lightning, or lightning bugs.
evolution: animals
Animal eyes are right and left, not above and below, to help align vertical direction.
development
Pax-6 gene has homeobox and regulates head and eye formation.
Consciousness>Consciousness>Sense>Vision
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Date Modified: 2022.0224