Color Vision: A Review from a Neurophysiological Perspective

Color vision is an extraordinary phenomenon not only for the beauty it bestows on the external world we perceive but also for the power it gives to organisms for exploring this world. Color vision has evolved to enhance wavelength differences between the reflectance of an object and its background in an environment where gradients of light energy are often minimal. Color vision is not concerned with analyzing the wavelength composition of light reflected from an object’s surface but with exposing an object in its background. That is why totally different wavelength combinations can produce identical colors (red and green mixtures match a spectrally different yellow) or why different colors can be produced by identical combinations of wavelengths (white objects can appear pink, pale green, or as other contrasting colors in the proper background). The colors we see in objects are those that best set them off from their background under the prevailing light conditions.

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