The natural design of visual machinery

Abstract

The main way to decipher functions associated to neural structures is to determine what messages are sent by the neurons and how they are coded. So far, the only way to find out microscopically what is going on in a cell is to record its electrical activity. As we move from receptors along the nervous system, the degree of semantic complexity of the input increases. Function becomes fuzzy. An alternative methodology, analyzing the structure that optimizes a function is presented here, showing that an optimality criterion may be applied to photoreceptors in severa! animal species.