The Biophysics of Visual Photoreception

JAN 01, 1988

The absorption of a single photon by a pigment molecule called rhodopsin in a photoreceptor cell in the retina initiates a process of amplification that ends in a neural response.

DOI: 10.1063/1.881152

Aaron Lewis

Lucian V. Del Priore

Vision is awe inspiring. The wondrous nature of this sensory process becomes clear when we consider just a few of its features. In the terminology of today’s technology, the human visual system has a set of stereoscopic foreoptics that are instantly and automatically focusable to a few centimeters and are fully corrected for geometric aberrations, a servo‐controlled two‐axis scanning mechanism, a millisecond framing rate, sensitivity to brightnesses varying by a factor of 100 billion, the ability to detect a single photon, nearly 100% quantum efficiency and a spatial as well as temporal image processor that could not be matched by the fastest supercomputer.

References

1. For an excellent review, see E. N. PughJr., W. H. Cobbs, Vision Res. 26, 1613 (1986).https://doi.org/VISRAM
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13. Methods in Enzymology 81 and 88; these two issues are devoted to the techniques used to study rhodopsin and bacteriorhodopsin.
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More about the Authors

Aaron Lewis. Cornell University, Ithaca, New York.

Lucian V. Del Priore. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.