HUMAN COLOR VISION

• Class 3: The Physiology of Human Vision

• Class 4: MECHANISM OF COLOUR VISION •
Class 5: DEFECTIVE COLOR VISION
Human vs Insect Vision
Light & Colors
 • Light consists of rays of different frequencies.
Different rays represent different colors

•
Color is a powerful (visual) communication meduim
The Visible Spectrum
• Different wavelengths are perceived as different colors •
Human eye can only see light between 380nm and 780nm

The Interaction of Light and Matter

• Some or all of the light may be absorbed depending on the

pigmentation of the object.
 The Nature of the Object

• The color we perceive an object to be determined

 by which wavelengths of light are absorbed or
reflected by the object.
• Only the reflected wavelengths reach our eye and
are seen as color.
• The leaves of most common plants absorb red,
orange, blue & violet . At the same time they
reflect all the green wavelengths and are
therefore seen to be green in color. These
characteristics of the object are referred to as its
spectral reflectance.
The Physiology of Human Vision
The eye lens forms a real inverted image of the object on the retina.
The light sensitive cells in the retina then produce electrical signals
which are carried by the optic nerves to the brain. The brain
processes the information and sends the message to the eye and
then we see the object.
The Physiology of Human Vision
The eye
lens
forms a real inverted image of the object on the
retina.

The light-sensitive cells in the retina then

produce electrical signals which are carried by
the optic nerves to the brain.

The brain processes the information and

sends the message to the eye and then we see
the object.
The Human Eye
Figure : Schematic diagram of the human eye
The human eye :-

The human eye is the sense organ that helps us to

see
The colorful world around us.

The human eye is like a camera. Its lens system forms an

image on a light-sensitive screen called retina.

The eyeball is almost spherical in shape with a diameter of about 2.3cm. Light
enters the eye through a transparent membrane called the cornea. Behind the
cornea is a muscular diaphragm called the iris which has an opening called the
pupil. The pupil controls the amount of light entering the eye. The eye lens helps
to focus the image of objects on the retina. The ciliary muscles help to change
the curvature of the lens and to change its focal length.
Basic Anatomy
Although small in size, the eye is a very complex organ. The eye is approximately
1 inch (2.54 cm) wide, 1 inch deep and 0.9 inches (2.3 cm) tall.

❑The tough, outermost layer of the eye is called the sclera. It maintains the shape
of the eye.
❑The front sixth of this layer is clear and is called the cornea. All light must first
pass through the cornea when it enters the eye.
❑Attached to the sclera are the muscles that move the eye, called the extraocular
muscles.
❑The choroid (or uveal tract) is the second layer of the eye. It contains the blood
vessels that supply blood to structures of the eye. The front part of the choroid
contains two structures:
❑The ciliary body - The ciliary body is a muscular area that is attached
to the lens. It contracts and relaxes to control the size of the lens for
focusing.
❑The iris - The iris is the colored part of the eye. The color of the iris is
determined by the color of the connective tissue and pigment cells. Less
 pigment makes the eyes blue; more pigment makes the eyes brown. The
iris is an adjustable diaphragm around an opening called the pupil.
The iris has two muscles:
The dilator muscle makes the iris smaller and therefore the pupil larger, allowing
more light into the eye; the sphincter muscle makes the iris larger and the pupil
smaller, allowing less light into the eye. Pupil size can change from 2 millimeters to
8 millimeters. This means that by changing the size of the pupil, the eye can change
the amount of light that enters it by 30 times.

❑The innermost layer is the retina -- the light-sensing portion of the eye. It
contains rod cells, which are responsible for vision in low light, and cone cells,
which are responsible for color vision and detail.

❑In the back of the eye, in the center of the retina, is the macula. In the center of
the macula is an area called the fovea centralis. This area contains only cones and
is responsible for seeing fine detail clearly.

❑Covering the inside surface of the eyelids and sclera is a mucous membrane
called the conjunctiva, which helps to keep the eye moist. An infection of this area
is called conjunctivitis (also called pink eye).
❑The lens is a clear, bi-convex structure about 10 mm (0.4 inches) in diameter. The
lens changes shape because it is attached to muscles in the ciliary body. The lens is
used to fine-tune vision.
❑The eye is unique in that it is able to move in many directions to maximize the
field of vision, yet is protected from injury by a bony cavity called the orbital
cavity.
❑The eye is embedded in fat, which provides some cushioning. The eyelids
protect the eye by blinking. This also keeps the surface of the eye moist by
spreading tears over the eyes. Eyelashes and eyebrows protect the eye from
particles that may injure it.
❑Tears are produced in the lacrimal glands, which are located above the outer
segment of each eye. The tears eventually drain into the inner corner of the eye,
into the lacrimal sac, then through the nasal duct and into the nose. That is why
your nose runs when you cry.
The Human Retina
The structure of the vertebrate eye. In the retina, cells are arranged in
layers. Ganglion cells Connecting neurons Photoreceptor cells Pigmented epithelium

Sclera

Iris

Pupil

Cornea Lens

Retina
 Optic nerve
(to brain)
Direction of light

Axons to optic nerve

Fovea

The Human Retina

The retina contains a chemical called rhodopsin, or "visual
purple." This is the chemical that converts light into electrical
impulses that the brain interprets as vision.

The spot where

 the eye and form the optic nerve,
which conducts the electrical
impulses to the brain.
the optic nerve and blood vessels
exit the retina is called the optic
The retinal disk.
nerve fibers collect at the back of

This area is a blind spot on the retina because there are no rods or cones at
thalocation. However, you are not aware of this blind spot because each eye covers for the blind spot of the other eye.
of Rods and Cones
Cones
Rods
Achromatic Low Light
A
Comparison
Chromatic
Less Acuity More Light
High Convergence More Acuity
Peripheral Vision Less Convergence
Central Vision
Longer Dark
Quicker Dark Adaptation
Adaptation 120 Million 5 Million per Retina
per Retina Shaped like a Shaped like a Cone
Rod
Cones • Density decreases with distance
• High illumination levels (Photopic from fovea. 3 Types of Cones
vision) • Less sensitive than rods.
• 5 million cones in each eye.
 sensitive to blue light (430 nm)

• L-cones, most sensitive to red light Retina center

(610 nm) • M-cones, most sensitive to

green light (560 nm) • S-cones, most Retina center
 Scotopic & photopic vision
• In very low light levels, vision is scotopic: light
is detected by rod cells of the retina.
• In brighter light, such as daylight, vision is
photopic: light is detected by cone cells which
are responsible for color vision.
Figure: Representation of the retinal photoreceptor mosaic artificially colored to
represent the relative proportions of L (colored red), M (green), and S (blue)
cones in the human retina. Modeled after Williams et al. (1991)

How does Color Vision work?

• An eye focuses light on the retina at the back of the eye
• Retina has two types of light photoreceptor cells
– rods – detect light levels (brightness) but not colors
– cones – detect colors
• sensitive to red light
• sensitive to green light
• sensitive to blue light
– other colors detected through different combinations of RGB • The
relative quantities of the three cone types are in the ratio
red:green: blue = 40:20:1
– the eye’s overall sensitivity to b is much lower than
to r and g
 How does Color Vision work?

• Most of the time, our vision is based entirely on input from our
cones
– rods are barely used (only in poorly lighted enviroments)
• dinner by candlelight
• dark house
• camping outside after dark
• ...
– those who live in modern (industrialized) societies hardly use
their rods at all
25

Retinal Photoreceptors
Cone cells are responsible for color vision and color sensitivity.
They work well in bright light than in dim light. Six to seven
million cone cells are found in the retina of a human eye.

They are of three types, L-cones, M-cones and S-cones, which

have three different types of photosensitive pigments, with a
photoreceptive protein called photopsin (or cone opsin). Each
pigment is sensitive to a specific wavelength of light and
responds to variation in colors in a different way.

L-cones respond to light of long wavelengths such as red,

M-cones respond to medium wavelengths such as green,
and S-cones respond to light of short wavelengths such as
blue.

Sensitivity of cones
 Color Vision(color-sensitive pigments)

The color-responsive chemicals in the cones are called cone

pigments and are very similar to the chemicals in the rods. The
retinal portion of the chemical is the same, however, the
scotopsin is replaced with photopsins.

There are three kinds of color-sensitive pigments:

Red-sensitive pigment
Green-sensitive pigment
Blue-sensitive pigment

Each cone cell has one of these pigments so that it is sensitive to

that color. The human eye can sense almost any gradation of
color when red, green, and blue are mixed.
 The response of cone cells depends on the wavelength and intensity
of light that they react with. The brain cannot differentiate between
colors if it receives signals from only one type of cone cells. It is
required that a minimum of two types of cones interact with each
other so that color vision happens. The brain can examine the signals
from at least two cone types and decide the intensity and color of the
light.
Light from an object strikes the rod and cone cells in the retina. The
rods and cones send neural signals to the bipolar cells. The bipolar
cells are located between photoreceptors (rods and cones) and
ganglion cells. These cells then transmit visual signals to the
ganglionic cells, which carry
signals to the brain.

cones
rods
The structure of the arranged in layers.
vertebrate eye. Pigment
In the retina, cells are
ed Retina neurons
epitheli Ganglion cells Photorecepto r cells
um Connecting
Sclera
 Iris

Pupil

Corne a
Len
Direction of light

Fove
a

bipolar ganglion

ha

MECHANISM OF COLOUR
VISION
• TRICHROMATIC THEORY
• OPPONENT COLOUR THEORY
What is Trichromacy?
(having a perception of three primary colors. )

Tri stands for three and chroma is the Greek word for
color.

The term ‘trichromacy’ (also called trichromatism)

refers to the condition of having three independent
channels that convey information about colors,
derived (form)from three different types of cones.

The three types of cone cells

 have different
absorption spectra.
How does Color Vision
work? Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision
• Color-sensitive photoreceptors (cones) are sensitive to wider
range of light frequencies
– their sensitivity ranges overlap considerably
– their sensitivity differs considerably
retinal receptors artifitial RGB receptors
Trichromatic Theory of Color Vision
(Young-Helmholtz theory)
The trichromatic theory of color vision, also known
as the Young-Helmholtz theory, states that the retina
has three types of receptor cells, which react to light
of three different wavelengths - red, green, and blue.
These cells are responsible for the
perception(understanding) of colors.
The Opponent-Process Theory
The trichromatic theory is very popular, but it doesn't seem to
explain everything. Enter the opponent-process theory. This
model describes the relationship between the cones to explain how
they form a spectrum of colors. The basic idea is that cones are
linked together in opposing pairs; only
one cone in each
pair can create a signal for the brain at a time.
Let's ask ourselves this: have you ever seen a color that wasn't quite
blue, but wasn't quite green—a bluish-green? Sure you have. That's
because the cones for blue and green are not opposing pairs; they
are able to fire at the same time. However, have you ever seen a
color that's sort of yellow and sort of blue? No, there is no yellow
blue, just as there is no reddish-green. Red and green are opposing
pairs. Only one of them can be firing at a time. You can see blue
and red together, or blue and green together, but not green and
red.
This theory also explains how we can see the color yellow. Yellow is a
primary color, meaning it's not composed of any other combined
colors. So how can we see it if there is no cone for yellow? Yellow is
the opposing pair of blue, so as long as the blue cone is active, the
 red and green cones cannot send signals to the brain that can be
translated as yellow. However, when the blue cone is inactive, the
red and green cones can receive yellow light (which has a
medium-long wavelength) and transmit that signal.
But the minute blue comes back on, this is inhibited—you can only
see blue or yellow in a single spot. They can be next to each other,
but not overlapping or mixing. In a similar way, the balance of
signals between all three cones produces the colors of black or
white but never both simultaneousl. Thus our three
Opponent Processing Theory of Color Vision
• German psychologist E. Hering proposed in the 19th-century a
system of 6 elementary colors
arranged in three opponent pairs
as a basis of color perception
– white – black
– red – green
– blue – yellow
 – The above colors are opposed in the
sense that no one would describe
a particular color
• whitish-black
• reddish-green
• bluish-yellow
• This model corresponds closely to the opponent channels
created by the human retina
38

Opponent Processing Theory of Color Vision

• How do we see a broad range of colors?
– our brain combines the signals from the cones by subtraction • the 3
cones overlap in the wavelengths of light to which they respond, so it is more efficient
for the visual system to record differences between the responses of cones, rather
than each type of cone's individual response
– neurons in the visual cortex (at the back of our brain)
 • subtract the signals coming over the optic nerves from the green (medium- ) and red
(low-frequency) cones, producing ‘red-green’ difference signal
• subtract the signals from
the high- and
low-frequency cones,
yielding a ‘yellow-blue’
difference signal channel
• finally, a third group of
neurons adds the signals
coming from the low- and
medium-frequency
cones to produce an
overall luminance
(or ‘black-white’) signal channel

– these 3 channels are called

color-opponent channels