The Wellcome Prize Lecture. Visual signals in the retina: from photons to synapses.

The ability to see the world around us is an immediate and striking example of the abilities of the nervous system, and perhaps for this reason, vision is one of the most intensively studied aspects of brain function (Hubel, 1995). This paper examines some of the earliest steps in vision occurring in the retina (Dowling, 1987; Rodieck, 1998).