A thermodynamically complete model of visual processing

Current paradigms in visual neuroscience attribute ~99% of computational work to neural circuits, treating ocular media as passive refractive elements. This "neuro-centric" model fails to reconcile: (1) the extreme metabolic efficiency of vision with theoretical computational demands, (2) the irreversibility of optical degradation despite cortical plasticity, (3) the evolutionary redundancy of 1.2M optic nerve fibers transmitting only 10-20 MB/s, and (4) the implausible thermodynamic overhead of cortical processing. We propose a Thermodynamically Complete Model (TCM) that accounts for passive physical computations performed by wavefront propagation through non-homogeneous ocular media. We demonstrate that the eye performs ~10¹²-10¹³ operations per second via interference, diffraction, and gradient-index (GRIN) refraction at zero metabolic cost. This framework: Reduces cortical computational requirements by 10-20× Increases optic nerve bandwidth estimates to 200-500 MB/s Explains clinical irreversibility of optical aberrations Improves thermodynamic efficiency from implausible (2,685× overhead) to biologically reasonable (27,000× overhead) The model has immediate applications in neuromorphic engineering, energy-efficient artificial vision systems, and clinical ophthalmology. Keywords: optical computation, wavefront physics, Landauer's principle, retinal metabolism, thermodynamic efficiency, neuromorphic engineering, visual processing architecture