Eye is the window to our soul

English physicist Sir Isaac Newton, in an experiment, observed

that a ray of sunlight, or white light, was broken up into the brilliant
colors of the spectrum when it passed through a glass prism. He
then noticed that the ray recombined into white light when it was
beamed back through another prism. It occurred to Newton that
since light rays are not colored, color must not be an actual
physical quality in the world. He concluded that color must
exist only in the mind and not in nature.
If color does not actually exist in the world around us, then
where do colors come from? To answer this question, we will need
to understand how our visual sensory system translates different
wavelengths of light into neural impulses so that our brain can
interpret the information it receives as the sensation of color.

How does the eye work

Phototransduction: conversion of
light energy turns into neural messages

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JadaWSDxBYk

Both Photos: Thomas Eisner

Visible
Spectrum

1.

Wavelength
(hue/color)

2.

Intensity
(brightness)

3.

Saturation (purity)

 The

distance from the peak of one

light wave to the peak of the next.

The distance determines the hue

(color) of the light we perceive.

The amount of energy in a light wave.

Determined by the height of the wave.
The higher the wave the more intense
the light is.

Intensity
Amount of
energy in a wave
determined by
the amplitude. It
is related to
perceived
brightness.

Saturated

Saturated

Monochromatic light added to green and red

makes them less saturated.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8_fZPHasdo

Two Major Theories

Three types of cones:

Red

Blue

Green

These three types of

cones can make millions of
combinations of colors.
Does not explain
afterimages or color
blindness well.

Opponent-Process Theory- opposing retinal

processes enable color vision
ON
OFF
red
green
green
red
blue
yellow
yellow
blue
black
white
white
black

Hering proposed that we process four primary

colors combined in pairs of red-green, blueyellow, and black-white.
Cones

Retinal
Ganglion
Cells

The sensory receptors

come in pairs.

Red/Green

Yellow/Blue

Black/white

If one color is
stimulated, the other
is inhibited.

Opponent

Processing
Theory
Does

this make your

eyes all weird out??

Opponent Process- Afterimage Effect

They are caused by fatigued cells in the retina responding to light.
After image: Stare at this picture for around 30
seconds. If you look away from the computer monitor
and stare at the wall, do you see an after image on
the wall?

Psychology, 4/e by Saul Kassin 2004

Prentice Hall

Opponent processing theory: we see in pairs

Rods

concentrated in periphery
approx. 120 million

detect black, white and gray

twilight or low light

Cones

Concentrated near center of eye (fovea)

fine detail and color vision
daylight or well-lit conditions
approx. 6 million

Blind Spot- region with NO rods or cones

http://dragon.uml.edu/psych/bspot.html

1.

Cornea: Transparent tissue where light enters

the eye. (COVERS get it Cornea)

2.

Iris: Muscle that expands and contracts to

change the size of the opening (pupil) for light.

3.

Lens: Focuses the light rays on the retina.

4.

Retina: Contains sensory receptors that process

visual information and sends it to the brain.

Lens: Transparent
structure behind the pupil
that changes shape to
focus images on the retina.
Accommodation: The
process by which the eyes
lens changes shape to help
focus near or far objects on
the retina.

Bipolar cellsin the first layer translate the

information from rods and cones back out to the
ganglion cells.Ganglioncellsthen transfer the
information down toward the optic nerve. The
point where the optic nerve exits the eye is
ablind spot. You cannot see anything because
there are no photo-receptors at the point at
which those cells exit the retina.
The information is carried down the optic nerve,
where it undergoes additional processing. Color
information is added at thethalamus. At the
end of the optic nerve is theoccipital lobe, the
structure most responsible for visual processing.

Optic nerve: Carries neural impulses from the eye to the

brain. Blind Spot: Point where the optic nerve leaves the
eye because there are no receptor cells located there. This
creates a blind spot. Fovea: Central point in the retina
around which the eyes cones cluster.

http://www.bergen.org

Use your textbook (p. 207). Close your left eye, and
fixate your right eye on the black dot. Move the
page towards your eye and away from your eye. At
some point the car on the right will disappear due
to a blind spot.

lab

We need both of our eyes

to use these cues.

Retinal Disparity (as an

object comes closer to us,
the differences in images
between our eyes becomes
greater.

Convergence (as an object

comes closer our eyes have
to come together to keep
focused on the object).

Optic nerves connect to the thalamus in the

middle of the brain, and the thalamus connects to
the visual cortex.

Ross Kinnaird/ Allsport/ Getty Images

Nerve cells in the visual cortex respond to

specific features, such as edges, angles, and
movement.

Hubel and Wiesel received a Nobel Prize for their work on Feature
Detectors. These specialized nerons in the occipital lobes visual
cortex receive information from individual ganglion cells in the retina.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_l4kQ5wjiw

Processing of several aspects of the stimulus

simultaneously is called parallel processing. The
brain divides a visual scene into subdivisions such as
color, depth, form and movement etc.

The dragon is anything but red.

The dragon rejects the long
wavelengths of light that to us are
red- so red is reflected of and we see
it.
Also, light has no real color.
It is our mind that perceives the color.

Genetic disorder in which people are blind to green

or red colors. This supports the Trichromatic theory.

Ishihara Test

Check out these sites to see what a

color blind person sees (normal, red
blind, blue blind, monochromatic)

http://www.colblindor.com/coblis-colorblindness-simulator/
http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcol
or/2.html

Color of an object remains the same under

different illuminations. However, when context
changes the color of an object may look different.
R. Beau Lotto at University College, London