How does the brain make images?

[HighlySkeptical]

Obviously, it's my first post. I have been looking around seeing if I can find some ideas on how the brain "makes" images. The light bounces off an object, eyes pick it up, and the brain processes it in what I believe is the visual cortex. But after it's processed, what is the final product in which I am seeing? Is it a collection of nerves, magnetic waves, quanta that form into that external object that was perceived? Would it be like if there was a monitor in my head which receives the processed visual information and is shown as a bunch of pixels?

[iNow]

The experience you have is the aggregate of neural activity. It is not really different from how sound or taste or touch are processed. It is just a different source and different paths through different parts of the nervous system. The incoming light strikes receptors at the back of the eye... an area called the retina. There are receptors shaped like cones that pick up on 3 different colors, and there are receptors shaped like rods that pick up on differences in light and dark. There are quite a large number of these, and the light will hit several of them. This triggers a response in the nerve cells, and the signal propagates down the nerve chains... through the optic nerve and to different parts of the brain. Once in the brain, it is interpreted. It's not really at all like a monitor or a series of pixels. It's more like a Fourier analysis and the way multiple different signals get combined.

 

If you are interested in learning more, I've always enjoyed sites like these: http://faculty.washington.edu/chudler/introb.html

 

 

Here's a link specific to vision: http://education-portal.com/academy/lesson/how-does-vision-work.html

[tkadm30]

Technically, I think this is called "neural representation".

 

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10753793