Abstract
tree-receptor theory of human color vision accounts for color matching. A bottom-up, non-linear model combining cone signals in six types of cone-opponent cells in the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of primates describes the phenomenological dimensions hue, color strength, and lightness/brightness. Hue shifts with light intensity (the Bezold-Brucke phenomenon), and saturation (the Abney effect) are also accounted for by the opponent model. At the threshold level, sensitivities of the more sensitive primate cells correspond well with human psychophysical thresholds. Conventional Fourier analysis serves well in dealing with the discrimination data, but here we want to take a look at non-linearity, i.e., the neural correlates to perception of color phenomena for small and large fields that span several decades of relative light intensity. We are particularly interested in the mathematical description of spectral opponency, receptive fields, the balance of excitation and inhibition when stimulus size changes, and retina-to-LGN thresholds. Keywords: human color vision, opponent theory, three-color theory, three-receptor theory, perception, neuroscience.
Highlights
Current neuroscience has a good understanding of the three-receptor theory of color vision, but the opponentcolor theory (Hering, 1920) still lacks important neural correlates
How this comes about is unknown and poses a fundamental philosophical question, e.g., how can a perceived quality like a certain color be related to a physical-chemical state or process? Color qualities are different from such processes, and clarification of their status within natural science must deal with the physical conditions for perception as well as thorough knowledge of correlations between the qualitative properties and neural activity in the visual pathway
Our recordings from opponent cells in the retina and lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) of the macaque monkey (Macaca fascicularis) led to a physiological model of color vision that accounts for several color phenomena and psychophysical data (Valberg et al, 1986a; Lee et al 1987)
Summary
Current neuroscience has a good understanding of the three-receptor theory of color vision, but the opponentcolor theory (Hering, 1920) still lacks important neural correlates. Scientific investigations imply that the elementary colors are associated with measurable physiological processes or states of the brain How this comes about is unknown and poses a fundamental philosophical question, e.g., how can a perceived quality like a certain color be related to a physical-chemical state or process? Thorsten Wiesel and David Hubel (1966), and Russell De Valois (1965) in the U.S started recording the activity of single neurons in the primate visual pathway. These recordings largely confirmed the idea behind zone theories (e.g., Müller, 1930) and Schrödinger’s (1925) transformations, it later became clear that some modifications were necessary. The newly discovered (Seim et al, 2012) substantial threshold of the retinal input to an LGN neuron
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