The most complex organ in the body? Some say it’s the human eye. Made of many working parts, the human eye functions much like a digital camera. Here’s how it works.
- Light enters the eye through the cornea , the clear front surface of the eye, which acts like a camera lens.
- The iris works much like the diaphragm of a camera--controlling how much light reaches the back of the eye. It does this by automatically adjusting the size of the pupil which, in this scenario, functions like a camera's aperture.
- The eye’s crystalline lens sits just behind the pupil and acts like autofocus camera lens, focusing on close and approaching objects.
- Focused by the cornea and the crystalline lens, the light makes its way to the retina. This is the light-sensitive lining in the back of the eye. Think of the retina as the electronic image sensor of a digital camera. Its job is to convert images into electronic signals and send them to the optic nerve.
- The optic nerve then transmits these signals to the visual cortex of the brain which creates our sense of sight.