The back of the eye is lined by an extraordinary biological pixel detector, the retina. This living neural network is able to extract vital information about the external visual world, and transmit this information in a timely manner to the brain. The brain, in turn, processes the retinal data and generates visual perception. In this talk, after an introduction to the visual system and retinal architecture, I will describe how we measure the functional properties of the retina, show what we have learned about its functional organization, and discuss studies aimed at guiding the design of retinal prosthetic devices. I will then describe the methods we employ to study visual processing in the brain. This project was inspired by the development of silicon microstrip detectors for high energy physics experiments, including the search for the Higgs Boson.