colour vision

How many colours we see is limited by our eye, which contains only three types of colour sensors. Using advanced techniques, vision scientists can take images of this “invisible” information and make it visible.

All activity in your brain – including those which mediates your perception of colour – is based on electrical messages between neurons. Vision scientists can measure these signals at the eye, and at the back of the brain.

Using techniques borrowed from astronomy, vision scientists can take high-resolution images of the retina, the fine layer of cells in the back of your eye.

In early 2015, an image of a dress polarised the internet: Some people saw it as black-blue, and some as white-gold. Three years on, we revisit the dress and discuss how vision science can explain this phenomenon.

Why might a person, who apparently isn't colour-blind, not be able to see red or green on a whiteboard? What is colour-blindness anyway? We try to find the answer in this Question of the Week. Plus, we ask which is worse for the environment - a few weeks of volcanic eruption or a few weeks of aviation. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists

This week, will a hot mint still taste cold? Also how skimmed milk could come straight from the cow in future, and why we walk upright without dragging our knuckles. Nicky Clayton discusses clever birds that use cigarettes to fumigate their feathers, Tim Clutton-Brock describes the family affairs of meerkats, and we find out from Andrew Smith why monkeys see what we see, but cats and cows can't. Plus, in Kitchen Science, we get jiggly with a jam jar full of rice. Like this podcast? Please help us by supporting the Naked Scientists