The Hungry Eye: energy, information, and retinal function

Simon Laughlin, Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge

CRS were proud to support the W.S. Stiles Memorial Lecture, given by Professor Simon Laughlin FRS on 30th October 2006 at the Institute of Ophthalmology, London.

Professor Laughlin discusses how measuring information in bits has provided a useful tool for measuring the performance of components in visual systems. This entertaining lecture explains some of the experimental advantages of studying early visual processing in the fly and concludes that photoreceptors are a bit like cars.

Click here to listen to the talk

Click the image above to view the sildes, and listen to Professor Laughlin's talk, which was recorded live. The talk is about 40 minutes long. This presentation has been converted into a Flash file and uses streaming technology, so that you can start watching without waiting for the entire file to download. The presentation will open in a new window and run from start to end automatically, or you can use the controls in the bottom right corner to pause and navigate from slide to slide if you prefer. Don't forget to turn on your speakers!

Abstract

The batteries in our digital cameras and notebook computers constantly remind us that energy must be used to capture and process images. A retina is no exception. Work initiated in insect compound eyes reveals how eyes are designed to satisfy their hunger for information while keeping at bay their hunger for metabolic energy. These designs involve a number of operations that are commonplace in retinal physiology; adaptation to light level, intensity dependent receptive fields and response dynamics, signal amplification, gradations in spatial sampling across the retina, analogue signal processing and the division of information into parallel streams. This work was initiated by a collaboration that had its roots in the work of W.S. Stiles. Its findings demonstrates how the use of non-mammalian species can illuminate the function of our own eye by identifying design features that are so useful that no good eye can afford to work without them.

Related Topics

The Vertebrate Eye and its Adaptive Radiation, by Gordon Lynn Walls

Computerised Visual Stimuli, by Tom Robson

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