Customer Reviews

The First Steps in Seeing

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Whoever you are and whatever your line of work: if you are interested in how your eyes work, this book will fascinate you as much (or more) than the hottest bestseller. The author, Bob Rodieck, spent much of the last decade of his career in science assembling and designing this amazingly lucid, accessible, and sophisticated account of what humans do with those photons that are lucky enough to hit their retinas. The figures are works of art--informative without being cluttered. The book is more than just an account of how the eye work: it is also a case study of the scientific method, with numerous wise asides on how to think about, and solve, scientific problems. The publisher, Sinauer Associates, is noted for careful editing and beautiful book production, and this 562-page book is a superb example of the craft that belongs right next to Edward R. Tufte's classic "Visual Explanations." If you are teaching a course in Sensory Psychology or Neuroscience (any branch), quick, get this book. Just the appendix material is worth the price.

There are many books on vision, but this one is truly unique. The illustrations, organization, and writing make it an example of everything a good text book should be. It can be read as an introduction to vision, to neurobiology, or simply to biology. The real beauty of this text is that it makes this elegant field of biology accessible to so many. A natural progression of chapters leads you through the field of vision, while a series of interludes and topics help you think through fundamental issues such as scale, measurement, and kinetics. Finally, an epilogue does what so few texts do: it outlines what we don't know! I read this during a week-long vactation in Tuscany, and it went down like the fine wine of the region.

I agree with the other reviewers this is a terrific book. I came upon this book by a recommendation from Jeremy Nathans, Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics at Johns Hopkins Medical School, who in Mar 2009 coauthored an article on color vision in Scientific American. While an introductory text, this book digs deep discussing pretty much everything known and not known (circa 1998) about how vision works at the retina/cellular level.

The format of the book is large, the text well laid out and clear, and it features a huge number of beautiful drawn, well planned, consistent figures. As an example of its depth, there are 16 pages devoted to explaining how a rod is able to respond to a single photon, and unlike many biological books there are lots of numbers. (This may be because, according to Prof Nathans, Rodieck trained as an electrical engineer.) The dark circulating current of the rod is shown as 34 pa with two figures showing how a single captured photon causes it to pulse by 0.7 pa (about 2%) resulting in the cell membrane voltage pulsing from -35 mv to -36 mv. This voltage change is clearly shown using a double figure (p172) detailing how the -1 mv transient rides on the -35 mv baseline (dark) value, which in turn modulates the glutamate signal to next cells in the pathway (bipolar cells). This book aims to teach. Highly recommended.

christof koch recommended this text in his Quest for Consciousness if one wants to understand the details of how light is processed within the retina. koch's book takes up the story subsequent to that. rodieck takes a spiral approach, starting with a general tour of the entire retina, then returning to each stage in more and more detail. his description of the action potential is for me much more understandable than the typical explanation in a neuroscience text. i consider this book priceless -- it is informed by intelligence and humor and a deep knowledge of the material. i wanted to understand how a molecule could absorb a photon and communicate that to the brain, and it's all here in remarkably clear yet precise prose. what a treasure.