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- Glossary
Cornea
The cornea is the transparent front part of the outer layer of the eye. It is involved in refracting light, ensuring that the image of a distant object falls on the point of sharpest vision on the retina.
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- Glossary
Convergence
Convergence of neurons occurs when several neurons are connected synaptically to a single transmitting neuron. In the eye, for example, information received by up to 130 receptors is transmitted to only one neuron in the retina. The opposite is divergence, when one neuron transmits signals to several other neurons.
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- Glossary
Lens
The eye lens is a transparent, flexible structure which, thanks to its varying degree of curvature (see ciliary muscle and zonular fibers), enables the process of accommodation (focusing) and thus sharp vision at different distances, especially at close range.
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- Glossary
Flocculonodular lobe
The flocculonodular lobe is an antero-inferior region of the cerebellum. It comprises two structures, the nodulus (nodule) and the flocculus (flocculus). It is involved in balance and spatial orientation, as well as in stabilizing and controlling eye movements. It corresponds to the vestibulocerebellum.
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- Glossary
Retina
The retina is the inner layer of the eye covered with pigment epithelium. The retina is characterized by an inverse (reversed) arrangement: light must first pass through several layers before it hits the photoreceptors (cones and rods). The signals from the photoreceptors are transmitted via the optic nerve to the processing areas of the brain. The reason for the inverse arrangement is the evolutionary development of the retina, which is a protrusion of the brain.The retina is approximately 0.2 to 0.5 mm thick.
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- Glossary
Red nucleus
The "red nucleus" owes its name to its high iron content. It can be seen with the naked eye as a large, round, reddish-colored nucleus in the midbrain. It belongs to the extrapyramidal motor system, and its central tasks are posture and muscle tone.
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- Glossary
Papilla
The optic nerve leaves the eye at the papilla, the optic disc. Since there are no photoreceptors at this point on the retina, the optic disc creates a blind spot.
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- Glossary
Pupil
The opening in the eye through which light enters. The size of the pupil is determined by the iris and changes reflexively (pupillary reflex). This process of adjusting to the brightness of the environment is called adaptation.
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- Glossary
Sleep phases
During sleep, we go through several non-REM/REM cycles, each lasting around 90 minutes. The non-REM phases consist of stages N1, N2, and N3, with slow delta waves with frequencies of 0.5–2 Hz dominating in N3 (deep sleep). REM sleep is characterized by rapid eye movements, low-amplitude, mixed-frequency brain activity, and greatly reduced muscle tone. Deep sleep predominates at the beginning of the night, while the proportion of REM sleep increases in later cycles.
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- Glossary
Visual pathway
The visual pathway refers to the network of nerve cells involved in visual perception. In mammals, it runs from the retinal ganglion cells in the eye – as the optic nerve to the optic chiasm, then as the visual tract – via the only switching point in the lateral geniculate nucleus to the primary visual cortex.
