Hello, olo: scientists report discovery of new colour

Researchers have described the discovery of a new colour, dubbed olo, through the stimulation of photoreceptors.

The experiment, which was reported in Science Advances, involved controlling photoreceptor activity using laser microdoses.

A group of five study participants, who all had normal colour vision and no ocular disease, reported seeing a new colour which they described as “blue-green of unprecedented saturation.”

The authors highlighted that this was achieved by activating M cone cells exclusively and bypassing the constraints of cone spectral sensitivities.

The principle for displaying new colours, such as olo, has been named Oz by the study authors.

“Oz represents a new class of experimental platform for vision science and neuroscience, which strives for complete control of the first neural layer to the brain, programmability of every photoreceptor’s activation at every point in time,” the researchers explained.

The authors shared that the new technique could be used in the future to “probe the plasticity of human colour vision.”

“Oz can programme signals to the human brain as if a subset of cones were filled with a new photopigment type,” the researchers shared.

“Such an approach can flexibly probe neural plasticity to boosting color dimensionality in humans, such as attempting to elicit full trichromatic color vision in a red-green colorblind person, or eliciting tetrachromacy in a human trichromat,” they added.