A team of scientists from the University of California, Berkeley recently announced the discovery of a new colorcalled olonever perceived first in the natural vision. Described as a shade green-bluade extremely brilliant And saturationthe Olo represents a challenge not only for human perception, but also for the definition of “visible color” itself.
The discovery was made possible thanks to an experiment in which five volunteersincluding three co -authors of the study, have undergone visual stimulations with a device called Ozcapable of issuing highly targeted laser pulses.
The laser was designed to activate exclusively the cones m present in the retinaresponsible for the perception of intermediate wavelengths, typically associated with green. In normal conditions, the stimulation of these cones is always accompanied by a response from the cones L (red) or s (blue), but in this case the stimulation was isolatedgenerating a signal never experienced in the natural vision.
A new frontier of perception
According to Ren Ng, one of the researchers involved in the experiment, the OLO is “more saturated than any color visible in the real world“, Comparable to a water green Only in very approximate terms. However this color and requires one artificial stimulation of the retina To be perceived. In practice, the OLO exists only in the mind of those who experience it, the result of a precise optical illusion induced by technology.
Despite enthusiasm, the scientific community accepted the discovery with cautious skepticism. John Barbur, an expert in visual perception at the City St George’s University of London, commented that talking about “new color” is one forcingbeing more than asubjective interpretation than a real chromatic discovery.
Yet the authors of the study see a possible application in the medical field in OLO: the OZ device could one day help people with Daltonism To perceive colors such as red and green, at least temporarily.
The discovery of the new represents a new frontier in the study of visual mechanisms and in neurophysiology of perception. Although not intended to become a color of the real world, this experiment opens interesting scenarios on how technology can expand the limits of human perception.
