- •Contents
- •Preface
- •Acknowledgments
- •1 Introduction
- •Vision and experience
- •Vision and natural science
- •Form vision
- •Visual illusions
- •2 Optics
- •Light
- •Geometrical optics
- •Imaging in the eye
- •3 Physiology of the eye
- •The evolution of eyes
- •The eye is not a camera
- •The optic media
- •The retina
- •Signal generation
- •4 Sensitivity and response
- •Psychophysical sensitivity
- •Vision in daylight and in the dark
- •Linear and nonlinear response
- •Spectral sensitivity
- •Response
- •Adaptation of cones
- •Photometry
- •Contrast vision
- •Vision loss
- •5 Color
- •Color order systems
- •The physics of color stimuli
- •Color differences
- •Color induction and adaptation
- •6 Color vision
- •Color between phenomenon and theory
- •Thomas Young or George Palmer?
- •Young–Helmholtz’s three-receptor theory
- •Hering’s opponent colors theory
- •The retinex theory
- •Color in current neuroscience and neurophilosophy
- •Defective and normal color vision
- •Limitations of the three-receptor theory of color vision
- •Opponency and an opponent ‘color code’
- •Correlates of related and unrelated colors
- •Antagonistic receptive fields of opponent cells
- •Spectral sensitivity and response
- •The opponent model and color perception
- •Summary
- •7 Neural correlates
- •Neural representations
- •Class A and class B observations
- •B- and D-types of cells
- •Psychophysics and the parallel pathways
- •8 Brain processes
- •Cortical organization and vision
- •Visual centers and areas
- •Higher visual areas
- •The binding problem
- •Mirror neurons
- •The ‘split brain’
- •Localization of brain activity: methods
- •Visual pathways and clinical investigation
- •Cortical visual impairment
- •Appendix
- •Glossary
- •References
- •Index
Acknowledgments
After completing the book, I wish to express my gratitude to many colleges and friends. Some of them contributed with professional knowledge, and others provided valuable perspectives and personal views. In alphabetical order I want to mention Otto D. Creutzfeldt, Torger Holtsmark, Anders Johnsson, Aart Kooijman, Jan Kremers, Barry B. Lee, Richard Jung, Karl Miescher, Borgar T. Olsen, Baingio Pinna, Klaus Richter, Inger Rudvin, Thorstein Seim and Lothar Spillmann. All have been an inspiration, along with the students in my classes, either by asking the right questions or by giving me the challenge and the support I needed.
Special thanks go to Inger Rudvin for language advice and for assistance in clarifying the text, and to Rune Kjær Valberg for his endurance in preparing the many figures. I also want to thank Heidi Arnesen, Per Fosse, Tor Gjerde, Jo Tryti and Jan Henrik Wold for valuable assistance during this work and for allowing me to use some of their data.
I also want to thank Rachael Ballard, Robert Hambrook and Andrew Slade at Wiley & Sons for their advice, great patience and courtesy.
This work has been supported by Thonning Owesen’s Foundation, The Norwegian Non-fiction Writers and Translators Association, and Norwegian University of Science and Technology.
Arne Valberg
Trondheim, January 2005