The optic nerve is the nerve that transmits visual information from the retina to the brain.
The optic nerve is composed of retinal ganglion cell axons and support cells.
It leaves the orbit (eye) via the optic canal, running postero-medially towards the optic chiasm where there is a partial decussation (crossing) of fibers from the temporal visual fields of both eyes.
Most of the axons of the optic nerve terminate in the lateral geniculate nucleus from where information is relayed to the visual cortex.
The optic nerve contains 1.2 million nerve fibers.
This number is low compared to the roughly 130 million receptors in the retina, and implies that substantial pre-processing takes place in the retina before the signals are sent to the brain through the optic nerve..
For more information about the topic Optic nerve, read the full article at Wikipedia.org, or see the following related articles:
Pupillary reflex In medicine, the pupillary reflex or pupillary light reflex, is the reduction of pupil size in response to light. It is a normal response and ... >
read more
Oculomotor nerve The oculomotor nerve is the third of twelve paired cranial nerves. It controls most of the eye movements (cranical nerves IV and VI also do some), ... >
read more
Visual system The visual system is the part of the nervous system which allows organisms to see. It interprets the information from visible light to build a ... >
read more
Peripheral vision Peripheral vision is a part of vision that occurs outside the very center of gaze. There is in actuality a very broad set of non-central points in ... >
read more
Note: This page refers to an article that is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the article Optic nerve at Wikipedia.org. See the Wikipedia copyright page for more details.