Option 2 – Colorful World In this activity you will explore the principles of co

Question

Option 2 – Colorful World In this activity you will explore the principles of color vision, and will demonstrate some aspects of color sensation with your own eyes. The Sensation of Color What are the three aspects of light waves? Name and briefly describe the three dimensions corresponding to color. How do we commonly perceive the three basic wavelengths? Visual Processing Explain how the brain processes color. What is the importance of both rods and cones in this processing? What role does the visual cortex, feature detectors, parallel processing, and binding play in this process? Theories of Color Perception Describe the two main theories of color perception. Which theory would explain primary colors better and which theory would explain color blindness better? Explain how these theories, initially appearing to contradict each other, are, in fact, complementary perspectives.

Explanation / Answer

What are the three aspects of light waves?

The three aspects of light waves are:

Name and briefly describe the three dimensions corresponding to the color.

How do we commonly perceive the three basic wavelengths?

When the light of a given wavelength enters the eye and hits the cones of the retina, a chemical reaction causes an electrical impulse to be sent to the nerves of the brain. The three basic wavelengths - red, blue & green have their own cones that identify them in the light spectrum. This helps the brain in interpreting the color thereby identifying it.

Explain how the brain processes color

Once the visual stimulation has happened and nerves receive the electrical impulse, the brain is in action. It interprets these signals from the retina, as cones - say blue, red or green and identify the color from memory. This is then further identified as say sky blue, teal or purple. If an object is associated with it, it could be corals etc., The inferior temporal cortex plays a major role in color perception.

What is the importance of both rods and cones in this processing?

Rods and cones are photoreceptors. Rods help in adapting to light changes - i.e., darkness and are more in number and much more sensitive. Cones help us identify colors and are color sensitive. Each of the three primary colors has their own cones with a range of wavelengths for the different colors.

What role does the visual cortex, feature detectors, parallel processing, and binding play in this process?

The visual cortex is present in the lower end of the cerebrum. The information from both eyes is merged here to get binocular vision.

Feature detectors help us to pick up the specific visual features of the world we see such as a sudden movement in the periphery to detect danger or the dim lights in a restaurant etc.,

Parallel processing is when multiple inputs from the visual stimuli are processing side by side or parallelly.

The binding play is how we perceive objects that may be separate entities as a whole picture.

In the visual perception process, all these above processes work together in helping us perceive the larger picture that we see. There are a lot of minute details that happen in real time, our brain processes all these information and presents us with the grand scene that we are perceiving as reality.

Describe the two main theories of color perception.

Which theory would explain primary colors better and which theory would explain color blindness better?

The trichromatic theory would explain primary colors better and color blindness is better explained by Opponent-Process theory.

Explain how these theories, initially appearing to contradict each other, are, in fact, complementary perspectives.

Because it is not possible to learn about vision and color perception without neither one of them. On a photoreceptor level, the answers are provided by the Trichromatic theory whereas the neural connection of photoreceptors and how it affects the way we perceive colors is explained in Opponent-Process theory. Therefore, they are complementary and not in fact, contradictory.

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