Eyes as Brain Extensions
Inspiration for Inventions
So many inventions have been inspired by nature, but do you know how much our eyes have inspired photographic inventions?
Camera film responds to light capturing an image. That idea was from the back of your eye, which is the retina. The retina, like film, captures the image. You open your eyes, light goes through your cornea while the pupil adjusts controlling how much light enters. The camera aperture mimics the pupil.
Focusing a camera lens is like the instant eye lens adjustments assisted by muscles changing the image from blurry to clear. This is super tech worth copying.
Remember as kids taking turns covering our eyes then quickly uncovering them to show our pupil shrink to friends or siblings? It worked even better with a flashlight. We could do it in a mirror too.
How does our iris compress so precisely in response to light?
Brain-Formed Eyeballs
None of us took classes to learn how to make our vision work. It is pre-designed.
Less than 8 weeks after being no more than a
fertilized egg, the optic nerve and retina become literal outgrowths of the brain. It’s like stems on the brain growing directly forward out of the brain. That is why the retina and optic nerve are considered part of the brain. In fact, your eyes are the only visible part of your central nervous system that others can see.
Electricity and Chemicals
As soon as light enters your eye, it initiates a cascade of chemical and electrical events triggering nerve impulses affecting the visual centers of the brain. This is the transference of information through fibers of the optic nerve.
The speed of all these operations working together from light to mental response is so fast it can save you from slipping on something you see as you are dashing down steps.
You may dodge a flying object you detect visually coming at you as your peripheral vision prompts you to instinctively tilt your head making it miss. It sparks our imagination with wonder when considering what might be required to make this work.
We cannot consciously process the speed and coordination of vision and body. So fast it is as if our body is seeing rather than the eyes sending signals to the brain which sends commands to the body and emotions.
Each human optic nerve contains between 770,000 and 1.7 million axons, or nerve fibers.
All of these physical, chemical, electrical events have no significance unless it reaches your brain in a meaningful way. Every day and night until you close your eyes to sleep, and then you have mental visions in your dreams. This is a lifetime experience for all of us with vision.
A World of Color to Feast Upon
Not only do colors exist in the world, but we have the tools to perceive light, colors, shades, and movement as our bodies see through our eyes, processed by our brain with the additional ability to emotionally respond to visual beauty.
Built by a Pro, but Not Human
You didn’t build it. You’re not that smart.
Your doctor didn’t build it. He’s not that smart.
No amount of money or cumulative human brain power in all our science can build this.
It is built by DNA but the DNA was built well enough to begin this fantastic show from fertilization.
There is no doubt about it. Here you are seeing letters representing meaningful sentences that your trained mind understands since you know language in its written form. Your are "hearing" what I want to convey thanks to your eyes.
Eyes are the windows to the soul?
Yes, and apparently also windows to your central nervous system.
But I hope you can see the meaning of all the seeing eyes in every species having vision that there is great building talent far beyond man.
