Grant: Operating Grant

The understanding of colour vision is a challenge that has interested scientists for over 300 years, since the time of Sir Isaac Newton. The core of the problem is to understand how the spectral differences in the physical world are translated by the brain into the neural signals that represent the wide array of colours we see in our perceptual world. This research investigates how the human brain sees colour. In particular, my experiments investigate which pathways and areas in the brain are used to respond to colour and which to black and white, whether our colour and form vision are combined in the brain, and why, of all the mammals, only old world primates (including humans) have developed colour vision that allows discrimination in the red-yellow-green regions of the spectrum. The research uses the latest techniques, including fMRI of the human brain.