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
Retina 500,000 bits per second (for more information on bits, see information theory) without colour or around 600,000 bits per second including colour. When the retina sends neural impulses representing an image to the brain, it spatially encodes (compresses) those impulses to fit the limited capacity of the optic nerve. Compression is necessary because there are 100 times more photoreceptor cells than ganglion cells. This is done by "decorrelation", which is carried out by the "centre–surround structures", which are implemented by the bipolar and ganglion cells. There are two types of centre–surround structures in the retina – on-centres and off-centres. On-centres