Psychophysical comparison of n-chromatic and achromatic color vision channels extracted from PCA analysis on photopigments
Abstract
Retinal photoreceptors are sensitive to photons energy and their electrical response depends on a well-conserved biochemistry cascade. The wavelength of maximal absorption varies for different animals and visual pigments. An important problem in visual science is to find a theoretical explanation concerning the optimal mathematical transformation from a highly redundant set of visual pigments (the input) to antagonist chromatic channels (the output) in the visual neural retinal processing. The main goal of this work was to demonstrate until what point data obtained from a decorrelation approach by Principal Component Analysis (PCA) is able to explain neural antagonist chromatic channels and psychophysical results, such as wavelength discrimination and spectral sensibility. Extending Buchsbaum and Gottschalk (1983) approach, we tested three vertebrate species: Octodon Degus, Human and Goldfish, showing that PCA constitutes a satisfying mathematical tool for testing binding hypothesis between physiology and psychophysical results in animal color vision.