Seeing Patterns

Humans see patterns everywhere: animals in cloud formations, faces in tree trunks, and Jesus on burned toast. Patterns are fundamental to the biology of how we see too. At the back of our eyes is a tissue called the retina, which detects light and converts it into neural impulses, giving us the power of sight. This process happens in photoreceptor cells: rods work in low light conditions and cones give the world its colour. New research in primates shows that cone cells actively align with the centre of the retina, changing how light entering the eye at different angles is perceived. The outer segment of each cone (stained red) absorbs light, the inner segment (blue) provides the cell's energy, and the calyceal process (green) rigidly aligns the two. The organised pattern of cone cells screens out light entering the pupil's edge, which can become distorted, thereby increasing the resolution of our eyes.

Written by Henry Stennett

Henry Stennett

Writer

Henry is a science communicator at Cancer Research UK and a freelance writer. He used to research microbiology but now he’s got the writing bug.

• Image from work by Anna Verschueren and colleagues
• Sorbonne Université, INSERM, CNRS, Institut de la Vision, Paris, France
• Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
• Published in Communications Biology, January 2022