Recent advances in adaptive optics, a technique borrowed from astronomy, has revealed new insights into the arrangement of retinas in living people, which show surprising variation from one person to the next. Nonetheless, our perceptions don’t vary as might be expected.

As researchers took pictures of the thousands of cells responsible for detecting color in the deepest layer of the eye, they found that our eyes are physically wired differently. Yet we all — with the exception of the colorblind — identify colors similarly. The results suggest that the brain plays an even more significant role than previously thought in deciding what we see. The findings were detailed in a recent issue of the Journal of Neuroscience. Read the full story.