question: How does the visual data that the human eye sends to the brain look like?
comment: Look like? It's small electrical signals basically, looks like the information going between your GFX card and monitor I reckon
passages: The final result of all this processing is five different populations of ganglion cells that send visual (image-forming and non-image-forming) information to the brain:
  
  BULLET::::1. M cells, with large center-surround receptive fields that are sensitive to depth, indifferent to color, and rapidly adapt to a stimulus;
  
  BULLET::::2. P cells, with smaller center-surround receptive fields that are sensitive to color and shape;
  
  BULLET::::3. K cells, with very large center-only receptive fields that are sensitive to color and indifferent to shape or depth;
  
  BULLET::::4. another population that is intrinsically photosensitive; and
  
  BULLET::::5. a final population that is used for eye movements.
   BULLET::::4. The processor. For all digital imaging systems, the electronic signals produced by the capture device must be manipulated by an algorithm which formats the signals so they can be displayed as an image. In practice, there are often multiple processors involved in the creation of a digital image.
  
  BULLET::::5. The display. The display takes the electronic signals which have been manipulated by the processor and renders them on some visual medium. Examples include paper (for printed, or "hard copy" images), television, computer monitor, or projector.
   A 2006 University of Pennsylvania study calculated the approximate bandwidth of human retinas to be about 8960 kilobits per second, whereas guinea pig retinas transfer at about 875 kilobits.
   BULLET::::- Synapse, chemical synapse, electrical synapse, neurotransmitter, synaptic vesicle, active zone
  
  BULLET::::- Cytochrome c oxidase There is a direct relation between this enzyme's activity and neuronal activity. It is used to aid mapping of regional brain metabolism in animals.
  
  BULLET::::- Virtual microscopy – a method of posting microscope images on, and transmitting them over, computer networks. Technology has advanced where digitized images are approaching that which is visible to the trained human eye under a powerful optical microscope.
   Section::::The cognitive and computational approaches.
  
  In the 1970s, David Marr developed a multi-level theory of vision, which analyzed the process of vision at different levels of abstraction. In order to focus on the understanding of specific problems in vision, he identified three levels of analysis: the "computational", "algorithmic" and "implementational" levels. Many vision scientists, including Tomaso Poggio, have embraced these levels of analysis and employed them to further characterize vision from a computational perspective.
   A human can distinguish differences in line length, shape, orientation, and color (hue) readily without significant processing effort; these are referred to as "pre-attentive attributes". For example, it may require significant time and effort ("attentive processing") to identify the number of times the digit "5" appears in a series of numbers; but if that digit is different in size, orientation, or color, instances of the digit can be noted quickly through pre-attentive processing.
   Section::::Related fields.:Neurobiology.
   Section::::Types.
  
  Section::::Types.:Vision.
  
  In many ways, vision is the primary human sense. Light is taken in through each eye and focused in a way which sorts it on the retina according to direction of origin. A dense surface of photosensitive cells, including rods, cones, and intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells captures information about the intensity, color, and position of incoming light. Some processing of texture and movement occurs within the neurons on the retina before the information is sent to the brain. In total, about 15 differing types of information are then forwarded to the brain proper via the optic nerve.
   BULLET::::- Video excerpts
   This technique is like what many museum visitors do when they encounter a complicated abstract sculpture: They walk around it to view it from all directions, in order to understand it better. The human visual system perceives visual information as a pattern on the retina, which is 2-dimensional. Thus walking around the sculpture to understand it better creates a temporal sequence of 2-dimensional images in the brain.
   Section::::Physical basis.
  
  The biological foundation of the mind's eye is not fully understood. Studies using fMRI have shown that the lateral geniculate nucleus and the V1 area of the visual cortex are activated during mental imagery tasks. Ratey writes:
   BULLET::::- Image acquisition – A digital image is produced by one or several image sensors, which, besides various types of light-sensitive cameras, include range sensors, tomography devices, radar, ultra-sonic cameras, etc. Depending on the type of sensor, the resulting image data is an ordinary 2D image, a 3D volume, or an image sequence. The pixel values typically correspond to light intensity in one or several spectral bands (gray images or colour images), but can also be related to various physical measures, such as depth, absorption or reflectance of sonic or electromagnetic waves, or nuclear magnetic resonance.
   BULLET::::2. Rather than becoming more and more specific as visual processing proceeds from retina through the different visual centres of the brain, the image is partially dissected into basic features such as vertical lines, colour, speed, "etc.", distributed in various modules separated by relatively large distances. How all these disparate features are re-integrated to form a seamless whole is known as the binding problem.
  
  Section::::Pontifical cells.
   The retina at the back of the eye is what perceives stimuli, allowing them to travel through the occipital tract to the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) within the thalamus. The data is then transmitted to the occipital lobe where the orientation and other recognizable factors are processed.
   Section::::Structure.:Optic radiation.
  
  The optic radiations, one on each side of the brain, carry information from the thalamic lateral geniculate nucleus to layer 4 of the visual cortex. The P layer neurons of the LGN relay to V1 layer 4C β. The M layer neurons relay to V1 layer 4C α. The K layer neurons in the LGN relay to large neurons called blobs in layers 2 and 3 of V1.
   The application of optical flow includes the problem of inferring not only the motion of the observer and objects in the scene, but also the structure of objects and the environment. Since awareness of motion and the generation of mental maps of the structure of our environment are critical components of animal (and human) vision, the conversion of this innate ability to a computer capability is similarly crucial in the field of machine vision.
   Several specialized tasks based on recognition exist, such as:
  
  BULLET::::- Content-based image retrievalfinding all images in a larger set of images which have a specific content. The content can be specified in different ways, for example in terms of similarity relative a target image (give me all images similar to image X), or in terms of high-level search criteria given as text input (give me all images which contains many houses, are taken during winter, and have no cars in them).
   A continued experimentation with the possibilities within these aspects of optics has resulted also in the prints RGB (1996-2012) and the computer animation RGB-information (2005).
  
  Section::::Work.:The Anatomy of Images, 2012-.
   In 2008 research developed in the Advanced Telecommunications Research (ATR) Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto, Japan, allowed the scientists to reconstruct images directly from the brain and display them on a computer in black and white at a resolution of 10x10 pixels. The article announcing these achievements was the cover story of the journal Neuron of 10 December 2008.
   In 2010, IBM applied for a patent on a method to extract mental images of human faces from the human brain. It uses a feedback loop based on brain measurements of the fusiform face area in the brain that activates proportionate with degree of facial recognition. It was issued in 2015.
  
  Section::::The mind's eye.
  
  The notion of a "mind's eye" goes back at least to Cicero's reference to mentis oculi during his discussion of the orator's appropriate use of simile.
   Section::::Structure.:Optic tract.
  
  Information from the right "visual field" (now on the left side of the brain) travels in the left optic tract. Information from the left "visual field" travels in the right optic tract. Each optic tract terminates in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) in the thalamus.
  
  Section::::Structure.:Lateral geniculate nucleus.
   Section::::Dr. Dolittle (1998).
   A third field which plays an important role is neurobiology, specifically the study of the biological vision system. Over the last century, there has been an extensive study of eyes, neurons, and the brain structures devoted to processing of visual stimuli in both humans and various animals. This has led to a coarse, yet complicated, description of how "real" vision systems operate in order to solve certain vision-related tasks. These results have led to a subfield within computer vision where artificial systems are designed to mimic the processing and behavior of biological systems, at different levels of complexity. Also, some of the learning-based methods developed within computer vision ("e.g." neural net and deep learning based image and feature analysis and classification) have their background in biology.
   BULLET::::- Image file formats. Image file formats provide a standardized method of organizing and storing image data. This article deals with digital image formats used to store photographic and other image information. Image files are made up of either pixel or vector (geometric) data, which is rasterized to pixels in the display process, with a few exceptions in vector graphic display. The pixels that make up an image are in the form of a grid of columns and rows. Each of the pixels in an image stores digital numbers representing brightness and color.
  
  BULLET::::- Image segmentation.
   Over 1,000 neurons mapped by Eyewirers may be explored on the Eyewire Museum, a browser-based visualization tool that pairs anatomical and functional data. 
  
  Section::::Methods.
  
  The activity of each neuron in a 350×300×60 μm portion of a retina was determined by two-photon microscopy. Using serial block-face scanning electron microscopy, the same volume was stained to bring out the contrast of the plasma membranes, sliced into layers by a microtome, and imaged using an electron microscope.
  