this post was submitted on 24 Nov 2024
194 points (88.2% liked)
196
16708 readers
2148 users here now
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
That is what the brain does and it does it all the time with everything. You can have a simple B/W picture and you/your brain will see motion.
That's not true though. Yellow is a very real wavelength. The fact that we don't have unique receptors for it changes nothing about it's nature. Also our eyes are not being tricked into anything, they just pass on the signal they get. Our brain sometimes plays tricks on itself. But interpreting red and green signal as yellow means getting closer to the physical truth, not further from it.
All receptors are always triggered for all wavelengths we can see, just some more than others. Different color have different ratios. An exactly 540 nm green light would still trigger all 3. It is all your brain doing the processing and those 3 primary colors of our usually 3 cone cells are the opposite of spectrally pure. Otherwise you would not even be able to see those mixed colors.