Event Date:
Thursday, December 12th, 2019 – 12:00 PM to 1:00 PM
Speaker:
Michael A. Webster, Foundation Professor Director, Center for Integrative Neuroscience (NIH COBRE) Co-Director, Neuroscience Major Co-Director, Integrative Neuroscience Graduate Program Department of Psychology
Host:
Lora Likova
Abstract
Abstract – Despite centuries of study, the principles and processes mediating our color perception remain poorly understood. We have explored these principles by examining individual differences in color vision. On the one hand, color percepts are largely discounted for the spectral sensitivity of the observer, allowing the individual to experience stable percepts despite marked optical and neural variations. On the other hand, these stable percepts (e.g. which hues look pure or unique) vary widely across observers. Analyses of these inter-observer differences reveal a number of surprising properties about the relationships between different color categories and how these categories are represented in the human visual system.