title: Perception of forbidden colors in retinally stabilized equiluminant images: an indication of softwired cortical color opponency?
abstract: In color theory and perceptual practice, two color naming combinations are forbidden-reddish greens and bluish yellows-however, when multicolored images are stabilized on the retina, their borders fade and filling-in mechanisms can create forbidden colors. The sole report of such events found that only some observers saw forbidden colors, while others saw illusory multicolored patterns. We found that when colors were equiluminant, subjects saw reddish greens, bluish yellows, or a multistable spatial color exchange (an entirely novel perceptual phenomena); when the colors were nonequiluminant, subjects saw spurious pattern formation. To make sense of color opponency violations, we created a soft-wired model of cortical color opponency (based on winner-take-all competition) whose opponency can be disabled.
authors.affiliation: Logicon, Inc, US Air Force Research Laboratory, Dayton, Ohio 45437-7258, USA. billock@wpafb.af.mil
authors.forename: V A
authors.initials: VA
authors.lastname: Billock
authors.forename: G A
authors.initials: GA
authors.lastname: Gleason
authors.forename: B H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Tsou
mesh_terms: D003118:Color Perception / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008027:Light; D008954:Models, Biological; D012160:Retina / Q000502:physiology*; D014793:Visual Cortex / Q000502:physiology*