Nijhawan R
Department of Psychology, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York 14853, USA.
Nature. 1997 Mar 6;386(6620):66-9. doi: 10.1038/386066a0.
The perception of yellow has played a central role in distinguishing two main theories of colour vision. Hering proposed that yellow results from the activation of a distinct retinal-neural mechanism, whereas according to the Young-Helmholtz-Maxwell view, yellow results from the combined activation of red and green cone mechanisms. When red and green images are presented separately to corresponding retinal locations in the two eyes, the resulting sensation is yellow. As the pathways from the two eyes do not converge until the cortex, this suggests that yellow can indeed arise from the central combining of separate red and green channels. I now show that the reverse process can also occur; the visual system can decompose a 'yellow' stimulus into its constituent red and green components. A 'yellow' stimulus was created by optically superimposing a flashed red line onto a moving green bar. If the bar is visible only briefly, the flashed line appears yellow. If the trajectory of the green bar is exposed for sufficient time, however, the line is incorrectly perceived to trail the bar, and appears red. Motion processing occurs in the cortex rather than the retina in primates, and so the ability of motion cues to affect the perception of colour is consistent with the Young-Helmholtz-Maxwell notion of a 'central synthesis' of yellow.
黄色的感知在区分两种主要的色觉理论中起着核心作用。赫林提出黄色是由一种独特的视网膜 - 神经机制的激活产生的，而根据杨 - 亥姆霍兹 - 麦克斯韦的观点，黄色是由红色和绿色视锥机制的联合激活产生的。当红色和绿色图像分别呈现给两只眼睛的相应视网膜位置时，产生的感觉是黄色。由于来自两只眼睛的通路直到皮层才会合，这表明黄色确实可以由单独的红色和绿色通道的中枢组合产生。我现在表明相反的过程也会发生；视觉系统可以将“黄色”刺激分解为其组成的红色和绿色成分。通过将闪烁的红线光学叠加在移动的绿条上创建了一个“黄色”刺激。如果绿条仅短暂可见，闪烁的线看起来是黄色的。然而，如果绿条的轨迹暴露足够长的时间，线会被错误地感知为跟在绿条后面，并看起来是红色的。在灵长类动物中，运动处理发生在皮层而不是视网膜，因此运动线索影响颜色感知的能力与杨 - 亥姆霍兹 - 麦克斯韦关于黄色“中枢合成”的概念是一致的。
