LXXVIII. Colour-vision theories in relation to colour-blindness

Colour-Vision and Colour-Blindness

Reflections on abnormal colour vision and theories of colour.

Historically, physiology is the daughter of pathology. Healthy people struggling with an overwhelming nature had no time to bother with the workings of their organs, and doctors-naturallywere always preoccupied with disease. For them the argument from malfunction to normal function has become almost second nature and the successes of this approach in such fields as neurology, endocrinology, and...

Colour Perception, and Colour-Blindness Tests

Hemianopic colour blindness.

A man developed cortical blindness after cerebral infarction in the distribution of both posterior cerebral arteries. When he recovered from this condition, he was found to be colour blind in the left visual field, but not in the right. This unusual situation resulted in apparently contradictory performances on hemifield and free-field tasks of colour discrimination, naming, and recognition. Th...

Colour vision

The immense range of colours that we see belies the relative simplicity of the system underlying colour vision. We see colours because each of the three distinct types of cone photoreceptor in our retinae is sensitive to a different range of wavelengths of light. The L, M and S cones, colloquially called red (R), green (G), and blue (B), are selective for long, middle and short wavelengths, res...