New research from City University London has challenged what author Professor Christopher Tyler said was a widespread misconception among vision scientists and the general population that peripheral colour vision is weak or non-existent.
The university said the findings of the study could have important implications for everyday use of colour in products and devices, including the design of traffic lights, signage and visual displays.
The research, published in the journal i-Perception, used multicoloured disks to show that the photoreceptors responsible for colour vision were present in a high enough density in all areas of the eye to enable vivid peripheral colour perception. As a result, the research showed that colour vision was not just restricted to the fovea in the centre of the eye, as is widely believed.
Commenting on the study, author Professor Tyler from the Division of Optometry and Visual Science said: ‘This misconception about weak peripheral colour vision is completely incorrect, akin to the oft-quoted view that we only use 10 per cent of our brains.
‘Although the number of cone photoreceptors is lower in the periphery than in the fovea, with about 4,000 cones per mm2 throughout the peripheral retina compared with 200,000 in the central fovea, this is still plenty enough to give vivid colour vision. In fact, 99 per cent of all the cones are in the periphery. My hope is that no one who sees this can persist with the belief that there are no cones in the periphery, and that we only have colour vision in the fovea.’
Using a set of structured images of arrays of multicoloured disks that varied according to distance from the fovea, Professor Tyler was able to provide a direct demonstration showing the vividness of peripheral colour vision.
He added: ‘The key factor in the demo is that, unlike traditional studies of peripheral colour processing, the coloured disks, or patches, are scaled with distance from the fovea.’