Ask A Scientist© Biology Archive

Author:      Carlos Rodriguez
Text:        When the brain sees color, is there a difference in how a right-
handed or left-handed person perceives color?

Response #:  1 of 2
Author:      samb
Text:        Carlos, This is a great question, but I am not sure that there is 
an answer.  First, how do we know what colors people actually see?  The only 
way we can do anything is by having people match colors with standard chips, 
but that does not tell us that we actually see the same color, or that we 
store it in our brains the same way.  I cannot think of a way to answer this 
question.  You could try by getting some color samples and having different 
people match them to some picture.  You could see if there is a difference 
between left and right hand people.  A related question is about color 
blindness.  In some books you should be able to find the color samples that 
show whether someone is color blind.  It might be a good study to ask many 
people whether they can see the colors.  Maybe with some of the new brain 
scans techniques, we might be able to answer it.  Keep asking such good 
questions, you could be a great scientist.

Response #:  2 of 2
Author:      Psych
Text:        I think of immediate relevance is the anatomy of vision.  First 
of all, colors are primarily decoded in the retina by cones, rods do 
black/white encoding.  Next this encoded signal is processed a bit but 
essentially maps spatially into the occipital lobe of the brain (rear-end).  
Since this is the first major location for processing and since it is being 
spatial in an area of the brain that is not known to have hemispheric 
specialization, this would suggest that at least at this level there would be 
no difference between color perception between lefties and righties.  That is 
not the end of the story of course, but then you start running into issues of 
semantics and philosophy.  The occipital lobes do have connections to the rest 
of the brain, chances are that because of the anatomy there is no real 
difference in color perception between lefties and righties.  In your reply I 
think you are hinting at the other problems involved and I agree.