This textbook is an attempt to answer a question: What would I want a student to know about the visual system before beginning work in my laboratory? Draft versions have been used for several years in an undergraduate course at Brown University. Inevitably, the content and approach of the book have been colored by my expectations of students in that course and by my own particular interests. It is assumed that students will have had an introductory course on the nervous system and will be acquainted with the fundamentals of cellular neurophysiology and the general organization of the vertebrate central nervous system. Minimal knowledge of physics is assumed, so some time will be spent on the elementary principles of optics as they apply to visual systems. Although the book is intended primarily for undergraduates, it can provide useful background for beginning graduate students if supplemented by material from the research literature.

The text is organized into three parts. Part I treats the eye as an imageforming organ and provides an overview of the projections from the retina to key visual structures of the brain. Part II examines the functions of the retina and its central projections in greater detail, building on the introductory material of Part I. Part III treats certain special topics in vision that require this detailed knowledge of the structure and properties of the retina and visual projections.