The retina processes information much more than anyone has ever imagined, sending a dozen different movies to the brain

We take our astonishing visual capabilities so much for granted that few of us ever stop to consider how we actually see.

For decades, scientists have likened our visual-processing machinery to a television camera: the eye's lens focuses incoming light onto an array of photoreceptors in the retina.

These light detectors magically convert those photons into electrical signals that are sent along the optic nerve to the brain for processing. But recent experiments by the two of us and others indicate that this analogy is inadequate.

The retina actually performs a significant amount of preprocessing right inside the eye and then sends a series of partial representations to the brain for interpretation.