12: Do Martians See Red?

Throughout this chapter, Ramachandran explains the process of color-blindness and how this can affect perception of different things in our world, such as the color red. In general, Ramachandran begins to explain that red is just a figment of our imagination, whether we are color-blind or not. Color-blindness is merely when the eye does not have any cone receptors in order to analyze the different colors. However, there are rods present and this is what allows you to still see black and white, and perhaps greyish tints of objects. The interesting point about this concept is that a person might not even know they are color-blind since they may just have a different perception of the colors that are being seen. Therefore, a person might not be aware of color-blindness unless they are told so.

Ramachandran relates the idea of the perception of color to the spatial and temporal lobes of the brain. This results from nerve impulses that travel to these lobes and then neuronal activity is processed and this is how we see red. The color that we perceive is what is reflected not absorbed. Thus, there is a wavelength that hits the retina of the eye and there is no conscious awareness of this process, which is happening. There is a way of teaching the color-blind patient what red is by continuously relaying the wavelength of red to the eye. Also, there is a way to stimulate the patient’s visual cortex, in order to allow them to perceive red the same way someone who isn’t color-blind would see the color. These are ways to compensate for the problem of color-blindness.

Furthermore, there is a term, qualia, which Ramachandran uses throughout the chapter describes a situation where people have conscious experiences. The idea of qualia is an individualistic sense for each person. The sort of perception that arises from qualia-laden perception is permanently ingrained in the brain. In order to have actual perception of something, there needs to be a vivid representation of qualia. Qualia is consciousness, therefore it is found in the temporal lobes of the brain. The temporal lobes are what take perception and transform it into an action. The way in which this was studied, was that researchers found that if there was damage to these lobes, then consciousness was greatly affected. However, qualia is not involved with the processing of the retina or the actual motor acts taken out, it is involved with the intermediate stages of processing of information.

Another region of the brain of great importance in this situation is the amygdala. This region of the brain is involved in monitoring high levels of perceptual representations. This will then decide whether that person has an emotional response or not to this perception. Another form of overcoming the issue of color-blindness is the ability to stimulate the temporal lobes as well as the amygdala. As a result, this would create a conscious experience, which is clear to the patient.