what we see of Tao?

One of the fields of complexity where most has been concentrated the research is the neurophysiology of the vision system, that is how and what we see.

Anatomically and physiologically the brain visual system is widely known:

 

The image formed on the eye retina and codified is transferred by the optic nerve in the lateral geniculate nucleus (NGL/LGN), situated in the thalamus, from where nerve pathways go toward the visual cortex (CV/VC), the brain area which specific elaborate the information coming from the optic nerve. In particuar images from the right eye are elaborated in the left visual cortex, and vice versa.

The visual information flow according to this anatomical-functional model is represented as:

Following this model some thousands (litteraly) of works and papers has been made. The direct consequence of a model of this kind is the representationalist approach to the brain, outlined by Maturana and Varela with the Caesar's figure looking at the Imperial Eagle:

In the Varela words:

"The Caesar's Eagle is represented in his brain through the activity flow (the film tape) cthat undergoes a "treatment" (by some small operator) and which later produces the behavioral proof of  the recognition by the word "eagle" (through carefully selected organ pipes)"

A model of this type is also what normally assumed by common sense: an object outise ourselves is represented in some way inside our head; more technically an object in the visual field are associated  specific neural activity patternsi, typically in the primary visual cortex. The ultimate consequence is when we imagine ourselves, where the imagined ourselves naturally imagines himself, and so on, as in the following illustration by Von Foester, an extreme solipsism case:

In reality, the model of the flow of visual information in the brain is radically different, closer to the following type (NPG: geniculate nucleus; Coll. Sup.: superior colliculus; Ipo.: isothalamus; FRM: midbrain):

where have been added those connections to the NGL which do not come only from the retina but also from other central areas of the brain, including the same visual cortex. The conclusion is that less then 20% of the information dell'informazione which get the geniculate body come from the retina. The situation, drom the point of view of a neuron in the geniculate body, is more similar to a cocktail party rather than to a linear element of an information chain forwarded from the retina to the visual cortex. In addition, the dashed arrows may be bidirectional for the information, for example the visual cortex receives information from the geniculate body but at the same time forwards other information to the geniculate body. The Varela conclusion is:

"... in the visual system ... does not exists an overall flux, the system is organized in a reticular pattern, and there is a simultaneous convergence or coherence among all the parts concerned."

Francisco J. Varela: Brain complexity and autonomy of the living