Abstract

The retina is a thin (100–300 µm) transparent sheet of tissue at the back of the eye. The retina contains a variety of neurons: photoreceptors, which transduce light into electrical signals; secondary neurons, including horizontal, bipolar, and amacrine cells, which process these signals; and tertiary neurons, the ganglion cells, which stream the processed signals to the brain. This chapter describes how transduction and signal processing is accomplished. The chapter focuses on design principles, learned from the study of animals, which help an understanding of human retina.