Visual Perception

Synonyms

Sight; Vision

Definition

In psychology, visual perception is the ability to transform visible light stimulus reaching the eyes into information supporting recognition processes and action. The various physical and processing components which enable a human being to assimilate information from the environment are known as the visual system.

The act of seeing starts when the cornea and lens at the front of the eye focus an image of the outside world onto a light-sensitive membrane in the back of the eye, called the retina. The retina is actually the part of the brain which works as a transducer for the conversion of patterns of light into neuronal signals. Precisely, the photoreceptive cells of the retina detect the photons of light and respond by producing neural impulses. These signals are processed in a hierarchical fashion by different parts of the brain, such as the lateral geniculate nucleus, and the primary and secondary visual cortex of the brain.

The major problem in...