What is the Visual Cortex of the Brain?

All Miami eye doctors will tell you that the most important part of the brain in regards to your vision is the occipital lobe which contains the visual cortex. This is the part of the brain that the optic nerves are connected to by the eyeballs. When someone looks at something, the image they are seeing is being transmitted to their visual cortex by the optic nerves, which send electrical impulses created by the retina in the back of the eyes. The occipital lobe is actually located in the back of the brain and contains many other important things, not just the visual cortex. If you are interested in learning more about the visual cortex in your brain and what exactly it does, then you need to ask your doctor in Miami Beach to explain more about it.

Different Parts of the Visual Cortex

While many people know that the visual cortex is a part of the brain that exists, most people don’t know that it contains different sections that are responsible for processing different aspects of vision. Here are the parts of the visual cortex that your eye doctor in Miami will elaborate on:

• The main part of the visual cortex is known as the striate cortex, or V1 for visual area one.
  
• There are also extrastriate parts of the visual cortex which contain visual areas 2-5.
  
• There is actually a visual cortex located in each hemisphere of the brain.
  
• Each different visual area is responsible for processing parts of what someone is looking at, such as the object someone is looking at, motion that someone is detecting with their eyes, and more.

Why People Have Vision Problems

Some people believe that they need to wear eyeglasses in Miami Beach because they have some sort of problem with the way their visual cortex processes information. However, this is not true at all. The reason some people need to wear contacts or glasses is because they have an abnormally shaped cornea (outermost layer of the eye) that does not refract light properly into their eyes. When light is not refracted exactly onto the retina, people will see distorted images. Wearing glasses corrects this problem because the glass frame properly refracts the light onto the retina in order to form clear images. Just because you can’t see without the help of glasses or contacts doesn’t mean that there’s something wrong with your brain.

photo credit: Sam Bald Eyeball via photopin (license)