IUBio

"New" colours possible?

Christian Wilms cwilms at stud.uni-frankfurt.de
Wed Oct 31 08:16:08 EST 2001


Richard Norman <rsnorman at mediaone.net> wrote:

> Not at all.  You siimply have determined that different people
> have slightly different mechanisms to see color.  It says
> nothing whatsoever about whether they see the colors
> differently or not.
Well not exactly. Through shifting one of the cones, you percieve other
colors, that rely on this cone (yellow and even green light will
partially stimulate the redcone) differently.

Actually this shifting of the red cone is an ongoing evolutionary
process. Originally (in certain primates) there were only blue and
green. The red cone diverged from the green cone as it is subject to an
evolutionary drift. If I remember correctly it was somewhere around 1 nm
per 1000 years.

I'll have to see, if I can find a reference for this, as I took this
directly out of a lecture on the neurobiology of sight.

bye, Chris 
-- 
Chr. Wilms (melvin at gmx.de)




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