Define transduction, explain its significance, and illustrate your understanding

Transduction is the process of specialized sensory receptors converting sensory information into neural impulses.

Because the brain does not know what to do with images, light waves, sound waves, and so on, this conversion into neural impulses allows the appropriate parts of brain to recognize and make sense of the sensory information it receives. In essence, transduction affords us the opportunity to experience our physical world. Without it, we would be able to bring information in through the senses, but would not be able to perceive (make sense of or understand) it.

The process of transduction for vision occurs in this way:

Light waves enter the cornea (bulging, outer surface of the eye) which is responsible for bending the light rays inward. The light rays then pass through the pupil (the opening of the eye, which looks like a black hole) and the iris (a muscle, which gives us our eye color and dilates and contracts as necessary to adjust for the amount of light coming in). The light rays then go through the lens (disk-like structure that focuses the light), which then sends the image to the retina (a sheet of tissue in the inside of the eyeball). The retina contains rods and cones, specialized cells that are responsible for the transduction process. The light waves are converted to neural impulses and are sent down the cells that make up optic nerve, then to the thalamus, then to the primary visual cortex of the occipital lobe to be processed.