Abstract

Radially outward-flowing, positively charged ionic current flowing through their bilayer double membrane side can enable cones or the rods they bias to distinguish electric vectors in opposed directions. This acts like a semicylindrical, out-ward-directed diode. Ionic current modulation is proportional to the membrane-rectified electric field. A positive reference direction and its radially reversed sense serve to complete an opposition pair for positive-negative purposes that is the opposition pair which is the physical basis of all the psychophysical data from color opponency. Two separate sets of receptors register the focal diffraction fields of a color-opponency pattern. Cones and rods separately register the two spatial diffraction patterns required for full color naming. This is the physical basis and the theoretical prediction for the experimental results of Edwin Land in the late 1950s. Three variables account for the accumulated psychophysical data of trichromacy; one for each diffraction pattern and the third variable is physiologically conditioned by lens accommodation. The brain operates by acting on its interpretation of the information that is in a spatial Fourier transformation mode retinally encoded by synoptic discharge proportional to an object's spatial frequency.¹

© 1985 Optical Society of America