Human Color Vision and Tetrachromacy

Book excerpt: Human color perception is widely understood to be based on a neural coding system involving signals from three distinct classes of retinal photoreceptors. This retina processing model has long served as the mainstream scientific template for human color vision research and has also proven to be practically useful for designing display technologies, user-interfaces and medical diagnosis tools that enlist human color perception behaviors. Recent findings in the area of retina photopigment gene sequencing have made important updates to our understanding of the molecular basis and genetic inheritance of human color vision individual variations. This Element focuses on new knowledge about the linkages between color vision genetics and color perception variation, and the color perception consequences of inheriting alternative, non-normative, forms of genetic sequence variation.