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Related Concept Videos

Color Vision

Color Vision

Color perception begins in the retina, the light-sensitive layer at the back of the eye. Two main theories explain how colors are seen: the trichromatic theory and the opponent-process theory. The trichromatic theory, proposed by Thomas Young in 1802 and extended by Hermann von Helmholtz in 1852, suggests that color vision is based on three types of cone receptors in the retina. These cones are sensitive to different but overlapping ranges of wavelengths corresponding to red, blue, and green.

Vision

Vision

Vision is the result of light being detected and transduced into neural signals by the retina of the eye. This information is then further analyzed and interpreted by the brain. First, light enters the front of the eye and is focused by the cornea and lens onto the retina—a thin sheet of neural tissue lining the back of the eye. Because of refraction through the convex lens of the eye, images are projected onto the retina upside-down and reversed.

Visual System

Visual System

Light enters the eye through the cornea, a transparent, dome-shaped surface covering the surface of the eyeball that helps to direct and focus incoming light. This light is then channeled toward the pupil, an adjustable opening whose size is controlled by the iris. The iris, a pigmented muscle, regulates the amount of light entering the eye by contracting or dilating the pupil, thereby ensuring optimal light levels for clear vision.
Once through the pupil, the light passes through the lens, a...

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 28, 2025

Automated Visual Cognitive Tasks for Recording Neural Activity Using a Floor Projection Maze

Automated Visual Cognitive Tasks for Recording Neural Activity Using a Floor Projection Maze

Published on: February 20, 2014

Altered grid-like coding in early blind people.

Federica Sigismondi¹, Yangwen Xu^2,3, Mattia Silvestri²

¹Center for Mind/Brain Sciences, University of Trento, 38122, Trento, Italy. federica.sigismondi@unitn.it.

Nature Communications

|April 24, 2024

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Early blindness alters cognitive maps in the brain. Sighted individuals show hexagonal grid patterns in the entorhinal cortex, while blind individuals exhibit square grid patterns, suggesting a shift in spatial coding.

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Published on: July 21, 2020

Area of Science:

Neuroscience
Cognitive Science
Spatial Navigation

Background:

Cognitive maps, crucial for spatial and non-spatial representation, are primarily formed in the hippocampal-entorhinal system.
While vision is dominant in human spatial processing, the impact of visual experience on cognitive map development is not well understood.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the influence of early visual experience on the development and geometry of cognitive maps.
To compare the neural representations of space in sighted and early blind individuals.

Main Methods:

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) during imagined navigation.
Real-world navigation tasks.
Neural geometry analyses of the entorhinal cortex and parietal cortex.

Main Results:

The Human Navigation Network (frontal, medial temporal, parietal cortices) activates similarly in both sighted and early blind individuals during imagined navigation.
Sighted individuals exhibit 60° rotational symmetry (hexagonal coding) in the entorhinal cortex, while early blind individuals show 90° symmetry (square coding).
Increased parietal cortex activity in blind individuals correlates with the observed 4-fold symmetry.

Conclusions:

Early blindness significantly alters the geometric properties of entorhinal cognitive maps.
The shift towards square grid symmetry in blind individuals may reflect a greater reliance on parietal egocentric coding for navigation.