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Questions for Ch 1 of textbook.
1. What is vision good for (for a biological organism)?
2. What kinds of evidence tell us that vision is a constructive process?
3. What causes visual illusions? Why are illusions important for studying vision?
4. How does a pinhole camera relate to the eye?
5. What is perspective projection? How does it differ from orthographic projection?
6. In what sense is vision an inverse problem? Why does this make it hard?
7. Why do older people need to wear glasses for reading and viewing things close-up, even if they did not have to wear glasses when they were younger?
8. How do rods and cones differ? Name at least 3 important differences.
9. What is the blind spot? Why aren't we normally aware of it?
10. What is meant by cortical magnification? What does it do for our vision?
11. What is a "visual area" in the cortex?
12. What are the "what" and "where" pathways?
Answer question 6 in writing.
Questions for "Nerve Cells and Behavior", by Kandel et al.
1. Describe the difference between the receptor (or synaptic) potential as it travels down a dendrite and the action potential as it travels down the axon of a neuron.
2. Describe how excitatory and inhibitory synapses affect the membrane potential of the post-synaptic cell.
3. Where are the excitatory and inhibitory synapses generally located on the post-synaptic cell?
4. How does the number and timing of action potentials affect the perceived intensity of a given sensation (e.g. light or touch)?
5. Briefly describe the sequence of events in the knee-jerk reflex. What role do inhibitory interneurons play in this reflex?
6. How does the brain's "wetware" differ from a computer's hardware? How would vision algorithms be affected by these differences?
Answer questions 4 and 6 in writing.
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Constance Royden--croyden@holycross.edu
Computer Science 363--Computational Vision
Last Modified: January 18, 2023
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