The retina
The retina which is the deepest layer of the eye remember that we have a fibrous tunic which consists of the sclera and cornea then we have the vascular tunic which contains the choroid and then the neural tunic which has a lot of neurons as you can see and that really is just the retina and we'll go to this image real quick just for a minute but when light enters your eye it's gonna go through the pupil obviously and it's gonna go through to the back of the eye and here's the retina and so in doing so in following that path the light's gonna have to pass through the cornea the anterior chamber the posterior chamber the lens and then through the vitreous chamber and then finally that light is gonna strike the retina at the back of the eye in which you can see a little bit more macroscopically in this picture right here and within the retina we have three cell types the first type is called the photoreceptor cells or just photoreceptors and these are the cells that initially detect the light and there are two subtypes of photoreceptor cells and those are rods and cones we're gonna have a separate video where we go over the major differences between these but I'll just say this for now rods detect non colored light so non color vision just bright and dark and cones detect color okay see four cones see four color then we also have bipolar cells and then we have ganglion cells which eventually become continuous with the optic nerve these are the three major cell types there's also a couple other cell types called amacrine cells and horizontal cells and we're not going to get into these very much most Anatomy courses don't but they just exist pretty much to find tune and regulate the functions of these cell types particularly bipolar cells and ganglion cells okay now before we go any further I want you to notice something so we've got light that we mentioned was passing through the eye okay like this in this direction and then it strikes the retina but what's interesting about the setup of this is it actually doesn't encounter the photoreceptors first actually if we follow the passage of light the photoreceptors are at the back of the eye they're there actually we could say superficial to the ganglion cells so actually the light has to travel through the ganglion cells and then through the
bipolar cell layer and then finally is
able to make contact with the
photoreceptors but it's the
photoreceptors that initially detect
that light and then the photoreceptors
will have an effect on the bipolar cells
which will then in turn have effects on
the ganglion cells and we're gonna look
at that now in this slide okay now to
really understand what happens here we
have to understand what's happening in
the dark so imagine a situation where it
is complete darkness okay
so let's first of all say it's night
it's dark out you're in your room
there's no night lights doors are closed
and you have blackout curtains so you
can't see anything all right so I have
the photoreceptor cells in blue now
interestingly in the dark the
photoreceptor cells are actually
depolarized okay so the photoreceptor
cells are actually D polarized and that
not may not now that probably doesn't
make a lot of sense because usually only
think of depolarization we think of
activating but trust me this is how it
is and it will make sense in the end so
in the dark photoreceptor cells rods and
cones are depolarized that being said
that means the photoreceptors are
activated and they activate the next
neuron in sequence which is called a
bipolar cell it's also worth mentioning
that the way that photoreceptors
activate the bipol