June 25, 2023 | United States | Frank Shervin | ICR
There is nothing simple about the eye, whether it is simple1 or not.
Some of us remember learning the basics of vision in high school in biology. What we’re looking at hits the back of the eye, which is made up of a thin layer of tissue (half the width of a dime) called the retina. This photoactive tissue is filled with neurons. these cells
receive optical data and forward it to the brain. Each neuron sees the world through a small “window” or field of view. Researchers at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies have found that these irregularly shaped receptive fields fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle. This avoids the occurrence of blind spots that would result from gaps between fields. This also helps prevent blurry vision that would occur if the fields overlap too much. Thus, “the nervous system works more precisely than previously assumed and.” […] Apparent irregularities in individual cells can actually be coordinated and fine-tuned to make the most of the world around us” 2.
Adding to this discovery is recent and fascinating research into neuroscientific models of our vision. Both humans and animals perceive the visual world as a camera, but our eyes and brain are capable of “seeing the positions of different objects in a similar way.” However, an animal environment [et d’un être humain] is constantly changing and these changes could also influence the processing of visual information “3.
Using mouse retinas, scientists from Austria’s Institute for Science and Technology and Germany’s LMU have collected evidence supporting their theory that the way neurons are organized is influenced by visual statistics. Wide-angle view (panorama).
“We wanted to test this idea by taking advantage of the key visual changes regularly observed in nature: the gradients in light intensity and contrast levels between the ground and the sky, to determine whether the mouse’s visual system has evolved, to accommodate these limitations.” To examine the organization of the sensory space that activates each neuron in the mouse retina (receptive fields) in relation to the scenes observed by the mice, [Maximillian] Jösch and his colleagues have developed a new optical imaging method. Using this technique, they can simultaneously measure and track the activity of thousands of neurons in a single retina.3
Creationists argue that given the incredible level of detail of vertebrate vision, the mouse visual system did not evolve slowly4 through chance and time “to meet these limitations” but was originally created with this amazing ability. In fact, Jösch stated that “one of the essential characteristics of every living organism is to adapt to its environment in order to survive”3. Creationists agree. God created plants and animals to move and fill niches in the environment through continuous environmental monitoring.
Jösch and his colleagues found that the computations of the neurons in the retina of mice changed based on visual panoramic statistics of what that part of the retina normally sees during the day. This confirms their original hypothesis that the visual system is not intrinsically homogeneous but is in fact adapted to the external environment. “To our surprise, we found that retinal neurons are more likely to notify the rest of the brain when a stimulus change is unexpected,” said Jösch. “It’s important to note that the unexpected depends on where the neuron is looking, either at the sky or the ground. Thus, the circuitry of the retina has systematically adjusted its properties from the lower visual field to the upper visual field to represent the world more effectively.”3
These findings shed light on the visual systems of vertebrates and how the Creator, the Lord Jesus, created the amazing ability of sight in the first place.
references
* Sherwin is Science Editor at the Institute for Creation Research. He holds a master’s degree in zoology from the University of Northern Colorado and an honorary doctorate in science from Pensacola Christian College.