Hello,

Question

My question is:

What could you perceive if you only had one type of photoreceptor? Brightness, colour, both, or neither?

The answer that I came up with was:

If you only had one type of photoreceptor you would not be able to perceive colour nor brightness. One channel on its own is only capable of signalling amount of light, not colour.

*I was wondering if the answer may not be that it would depend on which photoreceptor you lost?

Thanks for the help.

Answer 1

The photoreceptor would sense brightness, whether rod or cone. However, since the cones work in combination to sense colors, that would not happen. Amount of light = brightness.

Answer 2

Okay thank you!