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Altered Color Perception

Eye Conditions | Last Active: Mar 13 9:31am | Replies (45)

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@kongtengco

Yesterday I was sitting closing my eyes outside. When I opened them the trees and grass were suddenly the richest hue of green I've ever seen and certain bricks and slabs within the pattern of the brick patio I was on were a beautiful medium blue I couldnt believe I had not noticed before. Then I closed my eyes again (waiting for someone) and the trees and bricks changed to the drab green and drab grey, respectively, that are their real colors. This happened twice sitting there yesterday. I'm a 53yo female with myopia and astigmatism but no other current conditions and no medications. I'm going to my primary doctor tomorrow about it.

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Replies to "Yesterday I was sitting closing my eyes outside. When I opened them the trees and grass..."

@kongtengco What you may be describing is retina fatigue which is normal. There is a lot of chemistry that happens in the eye to be able to convert colored light to a nerve impulse to send to the brain. Here is how to demonstrate this phenomenon. Stare are something of an intense color for a few minutes, then look at a white sheet of paper. You will see an "after image" of the shape in a different color.

Having your eyes closed if you were in sunshine, may have looked red because you are seeing the color of your blood when light passes through your skin of your eyelids. You brain started supplying green as the opposite color to ease the fatigue of only red, so when you opened your eyes, the greens were enhanced.

The primary colors of light are red, blue and green. Color vision comes from "cones" which are nerve endings on the retinas. Nerve impulses involve neuro-transmiters which are molecules that have to cross the gap between nerves to send the impulse along the the path to the brain where vision is interpreted, so your retinas have to do this and this process will fatigue with constant stimulation. When the cones for a particular color fatigue, they are less sensitive to that color which makes the opposite color of light more effective because it's opponent has fatigued and kind of quit the game. This study describes this effect of chromatic adaptation in a blue vs yellow color shift. Blue and yellow are opposites for light colors, and all colors are present in white light. When you see a rainbow or use a prism, the wavelengths for the different colors are separated and displayed. See page 13 of this study for a detailed explanation.

"Fundamental Studies of Color Vision from 1860 to 1960"
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC224321/pdf/pnas00145-0005.pdf
Also how colors look also depends on what color is next to it and the same color looks different visually when placed next to different colors. I am an artist, and that is something that I learned in my training.

Please share if you find an explanation for it.
I experience it quite often.