Perception

Today we learned about how our eyes and brains work together to process visual information. We did some experiments with our own eyes. Dan learned about the structure of the eye and some of the ways that it works. He learned about lateral inhibition, which can make it hard to notice differences between colors if there is not a distinct boundary between them. He learned about afterimages, which are ghostly images that stay with us after we have stopped looking at a brightly colored object because our cone cells become fatigued. He also learned about the blind spot, an area on the retina that does not have receptor cells and is blind. We don't usually notice our blind spot because our brain fills in the gap. It was fun, and Dan is looking forward to amazing his sister with these tricky illusions. - Erica