Los Alamos National Laboratory
This visualization captures the 3D mathematical space used to map human color perception.
Scientists refined and concluded Schrödinger’s initial theory, which did not take into account certain visual phenomena, such as the Bezold-Brücke effect.
A new from researchers at Los Alamos National Laboratory suggests that the way humans perceive colors may be much more universal than previously thought previously.
According to research, published in the Computer Graphics Forum, the fundamental ways in which people distinguish colors are not shaped by culture, language or personal experience, but rather arise from inherent structure of human visual perception.
The study revisits ideas first explored more than a century ago by Erwin Schrödingerthe Austrian physicist best known for the famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment. Although Schrödinger is widely recognized for his contributions to quantum physics, he also worked on the mathematics of color perception, attempting to define key attributes of colors such as hue, saturation and luminosity.
In the new research, scientists re-examined Schrödinger’s work using modern mathematical tools and data from studies on color perception. Led by data scientist Roxana Bujack, the team discovered several gaps in the original structure by Schrödinger. Notably, his model was based on the concept of a “neutral axis”, referring to the gray gradient between black and white, without formally defining it in mathematical terms.
To address this question, researchers developed a new geometric framework for understanding color perception. Their approach describes color differences based purely on internal structure of the “color space” perceptual, the mental system that humans use to process and organize visual information. According to researchers, this system naturally encodes how different two colors appear to the human eye.
Humans perceive colors through three types of cone cells in the retinaeach sensitive to different wavelengths of light. This trichromatic view creates a three-dimensional color space in which colors can be organized and compared.
Previous scientists have proposed that perceptual spaces like color could be curved rather than flat, meaning the shortest path between two colors It’s not always a straight line. Based on these ideas, Schrödinger attempted to mathematically define the color attributes within this curved geometry.
However, the new study found that their model failed to explain certain visual phenomena, including Bezold-Brücke effectin which changes in brightness can alter how a color’s hue is perceived.
To resolve these inconsistencies, the researchers substituted straight-line calculations by curved pathsknown as geodesics, within the perceptual color space and introduced a mathematical model that better fits experimental observations.
His work ultimately completes and refines Schrödinger’s initial theory, offering what researchers describe as the first comprehensive mathematical description of hue, saturation and luminosity derived entirely from perceptual similarity.
