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The pupil is a hole located in the center of the iris of the eye that allows light to strike the retina. [1] It appears black because light rays entering the pupil are either absorbed by the tissues inside the eye directly, or absorbed after diffuse reflections within the eye that mostly miss exiting the narrow pupil.
The irises of human eyes exhibit a wide spectrum of colours. Eye color is a polygenic phenotypic trait determined by two factors: the pigmentation of the eye's iris [1] [2] and the frequency-dependence of the scattering of light by the turbid medium in the stroma of the iris.
The entrance pupil is typically about 4 mm in diameter, although it can range from 2 mm (f /8.3) in a brightly lit place to 8 mm (f /2.1) in the dark. The latter value decreases slowly with age; older people's eyes sometimes dilate to not more than 5–6mm in the dark, and may be as small as 1mm in the light. [26] [27]
The iris (brown coloured portion of the eye) controls the size of the pupil by contracting the sphincter pupillae and dilator pupillae muscles. The sphincter pupillae is the opposing muscle of the dilator pupillae. The pupil's diameter, and thus the inner border of the iris, changes size when constricting or dilating.
Nerves involved in the resizing of the pupil connect to the pretectal nucleus of the high midbrain, bypassing the lateral geniculate nucleus and the primary visual cortex. From the pretectal nucleus neurons send axons to neurons of the Edinger-Westphal nucleus whose visceromotor axons run along both the left and right oculomotor nerves .
By analogy with a camera, the pupil is equivalent to aperture, whereas the iris is equivalent to the diaphragm. It may be helpful to consider the Pupillary reflex as an 'Iris' reflex, as the iris sphincter and dilator muscles are what can be seen responding to ambient light. [2] Whereas, the pupil is the passive opening formed by the active iris.
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Dilation and constriction of the pupil Pupillary response is a physiological response that varies the size of the pupil between 1.5 mm and 8 mm, [ 1 ] via the optic and oculomotor cranial nerve. A constriction response ( miosis ), [ 2 ] is the narrowing of the pupil, which may be caused by scleral buckles or drugs such as opiates / opioids or ...