Colour centre This is more important for perceiving the colour of objects and pictures. The double-opponent cells are receptive to opposite inputs from different cone cells in the retina. This is ideal for identifying contrasting colours, such as red and green. [1] Double-opponent cells are particularly important in computing local cone ratios from visual information from their receptive fields. Single opponent colour-sensitive neurons can be divided into two categories depending on the signals they receive from the cone cells: L-M neurons and S/(L+M) neurons. The three types of cone cells, small (S), medium (M), and long (L), detect different wavelengths across the
Trichromacy Young proposed that color vision was a result of three different photoreceptor cells. Hermann von Helmholtz later expanded on Young's ideas using color-matching experiments which showed that people with normal vision needed three wavelengths to create the normal range of colors. Physiological evidence for trichromatic theory was later given by Gunnar Svaetichin (1956). 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 called 11-cis retinal. Each different pigment is especially sensitive to a certain wavelength of