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Saba Ashraf's picture

Perception of Color

            Learning the differences between the rod system and cones was very useful in understanding color. When we discussed the rod system in class, it made a lot of sense that we couldn’t see color, but only light. The same permeability changes and signals were occurring for different wavelengths of light, so the brain had no way of distinguishing these signals. I found the point about color being a construction of the brain also very interesting in class, but in particular that colors can be constructed differently in different brains. I have always assumed that my version for example green is the same for every other person, but since color is a construction of the brain, this can’t always be true. The idea that colors are a construction of the brain does make sense to me in certain situations when different people can’t agree on one color being for example purple. In this case, two different people perceive the color as two completely different colors.

It is also amusing to think about the fact that to this day there really is no exact way to describe colors specifically even though they are a part of our daily life. However, I don’t think there are concrete ways of describing a specific color anyways since we all perceive them differently.    I also found the point that colors are fully dissociable from wavelengths to be very interesting because I was always taught that a specific wavelength needed to be prevalent to see a particular color such as red. I would be interested in learning more about being able to perceive colors without having that wavelength of light available.  

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