Eye and Brain

"The book is very good but it is structured like a text book. Its couching is a little heavy, not flowing like the divulgation books.
I found some mistakes. For example, the author says that the electric field and the magnetic field of an electromagnetic wave are out of phase (a diagram is shown) and that is not true. Since electromagnetics is not the field of expertise of the author, this is understandable and does not devaluate the rest of the book."
~ Written on 2004-07-20

"This is the classic introduction to perception and psychophysics, and remains as readable and entertaining as it was 30 years ago when I read the first edition. Gregory's was one of the few books on the subject accessible to the non-specialist that tackled some of the more difficult topics, such as how the physiology and anatomy of the eye contributes to perception, as in the case of physiological optics, retinal receptive field geometry, ocular domimance and saccadic eye movements, as well as other traditional areas such as color perception, space perception, and so on. There are also very engrossing discussions of split-brain experiments and optical illusions, probably the most fun part of the book for most people, which are worth reading just for themselves. Overall this is still a great book and one that everyone should read to gain better understanding of how their own visual systems and brains work to enable us to see and perceive the many simple and complex aspects of the visual world. After reading this book you'll have much of the background to read David Marr's later book, entitled simply Vision. This important work contains discussions of more complex visual cortical brain mechanisms and of Marr's important work in that area. Marr discusses his important concept of the "primal sketch" for extracting line primitives, which relates to retinal receptive-field geometry, and then works up from there to more sophisticated spatial-frequency filtering algorithms and mechanisms--ideas that revolutionized our understanding of vision and the brain."
~ Written on 2003-09-02

"eye and brain!!
best reard in coffee time..."
~ Written on 2003-08-05

"Who would have thought that a book about the mechanics, physiology and psychology of seeing could be such a riveting read? This is one of the best popular science books around, and I don't even think Gregory intended it to be a layman's book--it's just so well written and interesting that it will delight lay readers as well as its intended student audience.

Gregory starts with a short chapter intended to outline some of the less-obvious issues in understanding how we see. Here, as well as throughout the book, he uses optical illusions to make points. The next chapters cover light itself, and the structure and function of the eye and brain, including accounts of how the eye evolved. The rest of the book discusses brightness, colour, and questions such as "How do we visually determine size?" and "Can machines be taught to see?"

The book is full of accounts of intriguing experiments and case-studies. Two examples of many: Gregory and a colleague, Jean Wallace, worked in 1961-1962 with a man of 52 whose sight was restored to him after a life of blindness. The account of his slow and incomplete adaptation to the world of sight, and his ultimate slide into depression and death (he had been active and capable as a blind person) is fascinating and moving. Another example: Gregory discusses various researchers who spent some time wearing vision apparatus that dramatically changed their perceptions, such as Stratton, Ewert and the Paterson's. In these cases--where for example the wearer could see their own body suspended in front of them, or see everything upside down--the details of the adaptations of perception are thought-provoking and still not completely understood.

Strongly recommended."
~ Written on 2000-05-13