2. What anatomical feature of the retina causes the existence of a blind spot?
3. What are the five types of neurons (nerve cells) that make up the retina?
4. If one measures the voltage (i.e. the electrical charge) inside a cell vs. outside of a cell, what does one find about the charge inside the cell?
5. What happens to the charge inside of a cell when gates in the membrane open that allow Na+ (sodium) to enter the cell.
6. Give three examples of stimuli that will cause some type of Na+ gate to enter in some cell.
7. Where is the photopigment rhodopsin found in a rod (or cone)?
8. What happens to a molecule of rhodopsin when it absorbs a photon?
9. What do we mean when we say that a rhodopsin molecule is bleached?
10. What ultimately happens to bleached rhodopsin molecules?
11. What happens to the density of unbleached rhodopsin in a rod when there is very little light present? What happens to the density of unbleached rhodopsin when there is a lot of light?
12. Explain how dark adaptation occurs, and how it relates to the bleaching and rebuilding of rhodopsin.
13. What happens to the voltage within a rod when it absorbs photons?
14. How is the information that light has been absorbed transmitted to a bipolar cell?
15. How does a bipolar cell transmit information to one or more retinal ganglion cells?
16. How do retinal ganglion cells send messages to the brain?
Last Modified:
Tuesday, 21-Oct-2003
fleishml@union.edu