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Every human being has certain cells within their eye that are commonly referred to as cones.

Each cone has a different visual pigment: red, green, and blue. Humans are known as trichromats because of the three pigments found in each cone. You may be asking how it is possible for humans to see colors such as yellow, brown, or even purple if we are merely trichromats. Well, let me indulge you! Humans are capable of seeing multiple colours by the simple process of mixing the red, green, and blue pigments. When mixing these three colours, a person can come up with numerous colours that help make up the world we see today.

Color perception
The properties of color which are inherently distinguishable by the human eye are hue, saturation, and brightness. While we know that the spectral colours can be one-to-one correlated with light wavelength, the perception of light with multiple wavelengths is more complicated. It is found that many different combinations of light wavelengths can produce the same perception of colour.

Colour vision
Colour vision is the ability of an organism or machine to distinguish objects based on the wavelengths (or frequencies) of the light they reflect, emit, or transmit. Colours can be measured and quantified in various ways; indeed, a human's perception of colors is a subjective process whereby the brain responds to the stimuli that are produced when

incoming light reacts with the several types of cone photoreceptors in the eye. In essence, different people may see the same illuminated object or light source in different ways.

Visual sensation
Depends on chemical called photopigments

Photopigments Chemical including Rhodopsin and iodopsin that enable rods and cones to generate neural impulses. Rods depend on photopigment called Rhodopsin, and Cones produce pigment called Iodopsin. Colour in the human brain
Colour processing begins at a very early level in the visual system (even within the retina) through initial color opponent mechanisms. Trichromacy arises at the level of the receptors, and opponent processes arise at the level of retinal ganglion cells and beyond. In Hering's theory opponent mechanisms refer to the opposing color effect of redgreen, blueyellow, and lightdark. However, in the visual system, it is the activity of the different receptor types that are opposed. . Visual information is then sent to the brain from retinal ganglion cells via the optic nerve to the optic chiasma: a point where the two optic nerves meet and information from the temporal (contra lateral) visual field crosses to the other side of the brain. After the optic chiasma the visual tracts are referred to as the optic tracts, which enter the thalamus to synapse at the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN).

Theories of Colour Vision


There are two major theories that explain and guide research on colour vision: the trichromatic theory also known as the Young-Helmholtz theory, and the opponentprocess theory. These two theories are complementary and explain processes that operate at different levels of the visual system.

Trichromatic Theory
Trichromatic color vision is the ability of humans and some other animals to see different colors, mediated by interactions among three types of color-sensing cone cells. The trichromatic color theory began in the 18th century, when Thomas Young proposed that color vision was a result of three different photoreceptor cells. Trichromacy or trichromaticism is the condition of possessing three independent channels for conveying colour information, derived from the three different cone types. Organisms with trichromacy are called trichromats. The normal explanation of trichromacy is that the organism's retina contains three types of colour receptors (called cone cells in vertebrates) with different absorption spectra. In actuality the number of such receptor types may be greater than three, since different types may be active at different light intensities Each of the three types of cones in the retina of the eye contains a different type of photosensitive pigment, which is composed of a transmembrane protein called opsin and a light-sensitive molecule. Each different pigment is especially sensitive to a certain wavelength of light (that is, the pigment is most likely to produce a cellular response when it is hit by a photon with the specific wavelength to which that pigment is most sensitive).

Opponent-Process Theory

The color opponent process is a color theory that states that the human visual system interprets information about colour by processing signals from cones and rods in an antagonistic manner. The opponent color theory suggests that there are three opponent channels: red versus green, blue versus yellow, and black versus white (the last type is achromatic and detects light-dark variation, or luminance). Responses to one colour of an opponent channel are antagonistic to those to the other colour. That is, opposite opponent colours are never perceived together there is no "greenish red" or "yellowish blue". While the trichromatic theory defines the way the retina of the eye allows the visual system to detect colour with three types of cones, the opponent process theory accounts for mechanisms that receive and process information from cones.

Receptive elds excited by one colour of an opponent channel are inhibited by the other colour.

Complementary Afterimage
How are colour afterimages explained by the opponent-process theory? When one member of the colour pair is "fatigued" by extended inspection, inhibition of its

corresponding pair member is reduced. This increases the relative activity level of the unfatigued pair member and results in its colour being perceived.

Trichromatic Theory or Opponent-Process Theory?


In fact, as you have seen, both theories are needed to explain what is known about colour vision. The trichromatic theory explains colour vision phenomena at the

photoreceptor level; the opponent-process theory explains colour vision phenomena that result from the way in which photoreceptors are interconnected neurally.

Cognitive psychology
Cognitive psychology is the study of mental processes such as "attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, and thinking." Much of the work derived from cognitive psychology has been integrated into various other modern disciplines of psychological study including social psychology, personality psychology, abnormal psychology, developmental psychology, and educational.

Pattern Recognition
How do we recognize, identify, and categorize information? The identification of a complex arrangement of sensory stimuli

Pattern recognition
Human pattern recognition is considered as a typical perception process which depends on knowledge and experience people already have. Generally, pattern recognition refers to a process of inputting stimulating (pattern) information and matching with the information in long-term memory, then recognizing the category which the stimulation

belongs to. Therefore, pattern recognition depends on peoples knowledge and experience. Without involving individuals knowledge and experience, peop le cannot understand the meanings of the stimulating information pattern inputted, then neither possible to recognize the patterns, which means to recognize the objects.

For example, a man is coming toward you from far away, but after you recognize who
he is, although his image on your retina is growing bigger and bigger as he is getting closer and closer to you, your perception of the coming person has nearly no change but just that guy. This perception, of course, has boundary, the farthest boundary are where you can recognize the person. Is there any nearest boundary? Suppose a very tall man, which is double or triple of you, gets close to you, you can only see his leg, at this time you can distance between you not recognize who he is. When he returns back facing you, as the and him increases, the image you have is closer and closer to his panorama, then you can recognize him.

The Theory of Template

The Theory of Template mainly considers that people store various mini copies of exterior patterns formed in the past in the long-term memory. These copies, named templates, correspond with the exterior stimulation patterns one by one. When a simulation acts on peoples sense organs, the simulating information is first coded, compared and matched with pattern stored in brain, then identified as one certain pattern in brain which matches best. thus the pattern recognition effect is produced, otherwise the stimulation cannot be distinguished and recognized. Because every template relates to a certain meanings and some other information, the pattern recognized then will be explained and processed in other ways. In daily life we can also find out some examples of template matching. Comparing with template, machine can recognize the seals on paychecks rapidly.

(2) The Theory of Prototype

The Theory of Prototype, also named the Theory of Prototype Matching, has the Outstanding characteristic that memory is not storing templates which matches one-byone with outside patterns but prototypes. The prototype, rather than an inside copy of a certain pattern, is considered as inside attribute of one kind of objects, which means abstractive characteristics of all individuals in one certain type or category. This theory reveals basic features of one type of objects. For instances, people know various kinds of airplanes, but a long cylinder with two wings can be the prototype of airplane. Therefore, according to the Theory of Prototype, in the process of pattern recognition, outside simulation only needs to be compared with the prototype, and the sense to objects comes from the matching between input information and prototype.

Stages of Object Recognition


1. Object is segmented into a set of basic subobjects. This reflects the output of the early visual processing. 2. Once the object has been segmented into basic subobjects, one can classify the category of each subobject. Bieberman argues that there are 36 basic categories of subobjects, or geons. Recognizing a geon involves recognizing the features that define it, where these features describe elements of its generation such as the shape of the object and the axis along which it is moved. (feature analysis) 3. Having identified the pieces out of which the object is composed and their configuration, one recognizes the object as the pattern composed from these pieces (prototype)

Top down and bottom up processing

1. Top down processing can be seen as processing what one is perceiving using past information. It occurs when someone infers from a generalization, law etc. to conclude something about a particular example, instance, case etc. 2. Bottom up processing can be seen as starting with no knowledge on a subject. It is said to occur when one draws generalizations from particular examples, instances, cases etc. to capture commonalities between them.

False pattern recognition


The human tendency to see patterns that do not actually exist is called apophenia. Examples of apophenia include the Man in the Moon, faces or figures in shadows, clouds and in patterns with no deliberate design, such as the swirls on a baked confection, and the perception of causal relationships between events which are, in fact, unrelated. Apophenia figures prominently in conspiracy theories, gambling, misinterpretation of statistics and scientific data, and some kinds of religious and paranormal experiences. Misperception of patterns in random data is called pareidolia.

Pattern recognition systems


Human have two systems for recognizing pattern
1) The first system specializes in recognition of parts of objects and in assembling those parts into distinctive wholes e.g. when you are in biology class and notice the elements of a tulip, the stamen, the pistil, and so forth. 2) The second system specializes in recognizing larger configurations. It is not well equipped to analyze parts of objects or the construction of objects. But it is especially well equipped to recognize configuration e.g. if you look at a tulip in a garden and admire its distinctive beauty and form, you look at the flower through the second system. The second system would typically be most relevant to the recognition of faces.

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