The Universe of the Retina

Look yourself in the eyes and take a picture of your retina.

A constant flow of visual impressions accompanies every waking moment of our lives. The retina is the first stop on the information highway to the brain. Here, on the back side of the eyeball, approximately 130 million photoreceptors register contrast and color. Already in the retina, additional nerve cells (neurons) provide initial visual impressions, which are transmitted to the brain by the optical nerve consisting of about a million nerve fibers.

The Driving Force behind Sight
If the retina is injured, total blindness can result. For such cases, scientists are currently working to develop a digital retina. So-called retina chips can convert light signals into electrical impulses and then forward these impulses via the optic nerve to the brain. The retina is a sort of outpost of our brain and one of the key portals to our faculties of perception. It’s the point at which the light of the outside world is transformed into the images of our interior world of vision.

Visitors have the option of attaching the image of their retina to an e-mail and sending it to themselves at home.

Scientific and medical consultant: Prim. Priv. Doz. Dr. Siegfried Priglinger (AKh Linz)