Stephen J Smith Stephen J Smith Stephen J Smith is a Senior Investigator at the Allen Institute for Brain Science. Previously, Dr. Smith was Professor of Molecular and Cellular Physiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. In 1990, Smith published an article in the journal "Science", which proposed that certain glial cells in the human brain known as astrocytes would be able to communicate through chemical signals, rather than electrical. By utilizing the neurotransmitter glutamate, he was able to show that these cells, which had once been perceived as inert tissue between neurons, in fact were actively communicating with the rest of
OPN1LW LWS cone cells into horizontal cells, bipolar cells, amacrine cells, and finally ganglion cells before continuing to the brain via the optic nerve. Ganglion cells compile the signal from the LWS cones with all other cone signals that occurred in response to the light that was seen, and pass the overall signal into the optic nerve. The cones themselves do not process colour, it is the brain that decides what colour is being seen by the signal combination it receives from the ganglion cells. Before humans evolved to be a trichromatic species, our vision was dichromatic and consisted of only