What are the parts of my eye?

What are the parts of my eye?

Robert K. Maloney (Ophthalmologist) gives expert video advice on: Where do I go for eye care?; How do I find an eye doctor in my area?; Where do tears come from? and more...

There are two eyelids in each eye, the lower eyelid and the upper eyelid. The eyelids are critically important because every time you blink it smears a layer of pure tears over your eyes, which keeps your eye comfortable, healthy, and seeing well. The cornea is the clear dome that covers the colored part of your eye. In fact, if you touch the center of your eye, you're actually touching the cornea. The cornea's critical because it's the main focusing lens of the eye. The cornea does more focusing of light than any other part of your eye. The conjunctiva is essentially the white part of the eye all around the colored part. That's important because it produces some of the tears in your eyes, and it's what gets red and inflamed when you get pink eye. The iris is the colored part of your eye. And it's important because in the middle of it is your pupil, which is the window through which all the light passes from the outside world going into your eye. It's like a keyhole through which your eye does all its seeing. Your eye is a hollow ball and it's filled with a material that we call vitreous. It's like a jellylike material, and it's what gives your eye its structure and shape when you're young. It's important because as we age that degenerates, and that degeneration can lead to retinal detachments in some people. The optic nerve is the nerve that connects the eye to the brain. It carries all the images of the outside world back to your brain so you can make sense of them. The crystalline lens, we just call it the lens for short, is a lens inside your eye that allows the focus of your eye to change so you can see far away, intermediate, up close. It helps focus light from all different distances so you have clear vision.