Scientists have learned how to lure our eyes to see a whole new color

Black mirror, eat your heart. Researchers have obviously just figured out how to make people see a color brand new to humanity.

Scientists at the University of California, Berkeley conducted the study, published Friday in Science Progress. Using a technique called OZ, the research team prompts human volunteers to see a color beyond the “natural human range”. Oz could allow scientists to conduct experiments that have not been possible before, the authors say, and the lessons we learn from him, even someday help the colorful blind people regain their missing color vision.

Our Retini contain certain photoreceptive cells known as cones that allow us to see color. There are three types of cones that correspond to different wavelengths of light: cones with short wave (s), cones with medium wavelength (M) and cones with length (L) (L).

Usually, when we try to reproduce color in front of one’s eyes, we do it by manipulating the spectrum of light viewed by the retinal cones. But since some of our cones, more special M cones, share overlap in the way they respond to certain wavelengths, there are theoretical colors that our eyes can never really see. UC Berkeley researchers, based on their worse work, studying the cone cells, say they have found a way for this restriction.

Instead of trying to mix and compare different wavelengths to produce color, their OZ system stimulates separate cone cells using safe microdoses of laser light. By administering these doses only to the right spatial model, to activate only people’s cones – something that is not naturally possible – they have come up with how to create a brand new color.

They tested the OZ system of five human volunteers with normal vision. After activating only for cones, volunteers say they see a blue-green color from “unprecedented saturation”. The researchers have introduced this new color “Olo”.

To confirm that Olo is a real new color, researchers also made volunteers perform color matching tests. One of these tests included an almost monochromatic laser that produces the most saturated rainbow colors that can be seen naturally. The volunteers were able to combine OLO with the blue-green color of this arc, rejecting its saturation, showing that OLO really exists beyond the natural boundaries of our color vision.

Scientists have been able to stimulate several cone cells earlier, but the OZ system demonstrates that it is possible to stimulate thousands of cells per cone at one time. And researchers hope that Oz can have any potential uses down the line.

“Olo’s display is definitely cool, but we are all looking at the future about how we can use the technology itself,” said accomplice Hana Doyle, a fourth electrical engineering doctoral student at UC Berkeley, “Gizmodo told. “In fact, I am now working on a project using the same exact system to simulate a cone loss as what happens to retinal disease, in healthy subjects.”

Other members of the research team study whether it is possible to stimulate retinal cones and by expanding the brain in such a way that one can experience a fourth type of cone cell. The same approach can also allow people to miss a cone type (such as those with color blindness) to experience the corresponding missing colors, speculate researchers.

“We are essentially thinking that this is a platform we can use to make a whole set of new experiments,” Doyle said.

It all sounds great. But I personally hope that one day I will be able to see the lead and the beyond colors.