About Kai Schreiber Expertise Mostly questions specific to vision science and eye movements, with some expertise in general neuroscience and cognitive science. Strongest background in mathematical theory, modelling and the theory of perception, but I will try to answer anything that comes my way.
Experience Postdoc in Vision/Oculomotor research.
Organizations UC Berkeley
Publications Journal of Vision, Nature, IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Enginerring
Education/Credentials Dipl Phys (Universtität Tübingen), PhD (Physiology, Univeristy of Toronto), Graduate Program in Neuroscience (University of Toronto)
Expert: Kai Schreiber Date: 1/18/2008 Subject: color perception
Question I am doing research where I serve subjects food, and want to distort their color perception, but still allow them to make out the shape of the dish. Is there a specific color light bulb or sunglasses I could use? What method would work best to do this? Thank you very much for your time!
Answer Hi Matt,
while color perception is a fairly complex and difficult field, and I am by no means an expert on it, I think I can give you a few pointers. Throughout the day, the actual physical color of objects in our environment changes drastically, due to changes in illumination (the sunlight's spectral makeup changes during the day, for example), shadows being cast over them, yet due to a perceptual process called color constancy we don't see most of these changes and instead see things as having constant color.
I think rather than using colored lights or colored filters, which would just trigger color constancy reactions in your subjects which might remove most of the perceptual change you are striving for, you might want to manipulate the color constancy mechanisms themselves. By presenting everything in an environment that seems to be illuminated by a red light, but in fact is not, for example, you can make the perceptual system correct for the perceived illumination and actually completely misperceive the color of objects. Another option are monochromatic light sources (like sodium lamps), which make correction practically impossible.
As for the practical side of how to achieve this, I'm sorry not to be able to offer much advice. Somebody who has actually done work on color perception is probably a better source for that kind of advice.
