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<\/p>\nResearchers at UC Berkeley have discovered a new color outside the range of human color vision. Only five people in the world have seen this new color. They call the color “olo”.<\/p>\n
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According to The Atlantic<\/a><\/em>, \u201cThe color \u201colo\u201d can\u2019t be found on a Pantone color chart. It can be experienced only in a cramped 9-by-13 room in Northern California. That small space, in a lab on the UC Berkeley campus, contains a large contraption of lenses and other hardware on a table. To see “olo”, you need to scootch up to the table, chomp down on a bite plate, and keep your head as steady as you can.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Austin Roorda, a professor of optometry and vision science at UC Berkeley, demonstrates what it looks like to be part of the Oz experiment. Image credit: Austin Roorda, University of California, Berkeley.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Why the cramped room and complicated setup, you ask? To see this new color, your retina must be targeted by a laser with precise accuracy. The researchers created a special laser instrument, named Oz, that delivers light to only specific individual cells in your retina.<\/p>\n Here\u2019s the closest approximation of the new color that we can see without the Oz system. It\u2019s blue-green with unprecedented saturation.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The closest approximation of the new color. Image credit: BBC.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Your eyes see color using cone cells\u2014L (long), M (medium), and S (short)\u2014each sensitive to different wavelengths of light. Normally, these cones work together, blending inputs to create every color you\u2019ve ever seen.<\/p>\n First, the researchers mapped a part of the retina to identify each cone cell as an S, M, or L cone. \u00a0Oz delivers light cell-by-cell to individual photoreceptor cells on the retina. They used precisely targeted laser pulses to stimulate just the M cones, while avoiding L and S cones.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n The Oz software takes a color image (left column) and calculates which cone cells in the retina need to be activated for a person to see that image (center). It then calculates the pattern of laser microdoses that need to be delivered to the retina to activate those cones (right). Image credit: University of California, Berkeley.<\/p><\/div><\/p>\n <\/p>\n This bypassed the usual overlapping input that your brain uses to construct color. By isolating the M cones, the brain receives an input combination that never naturally occurs, resulting in the perception of a color outside our typical visual spectrum.<\/p>\n “Olo” is named for its theoretical LMS color space<\/a> coordinates for long-, medium-, shortwave cones: (0, 1, 0), representing the stimulation of only the green (M) cone in the human eye, with no stimulation of the red (L) or blue (S) cones.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Their research was published in Science Advances<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n To test if “olo” was truly beyond normal human color vision, researchers had participants compare it to a teal laser and adjust its saturation using white light. The researchers controlled the display on the RGB projector with\u00a0 Psychtoolbox<\/a>, a MATLAB community toolbox. When participants added white light to desaturate “olo”, it matched the laser\u2014confirming “olo” exists outside the typical human visual range.<\/p>\n The study advances our understanding of color vision. The researchers hope to use this technique to further research color blindness.<\/p>\n To read the full research paper, see\u00a010.1126\/sciadv.adu1052<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Researchers at UC Berkeley have discovered a new color outside the range of human color vision. Only five people in the world have seen this new color. They call the color… read more >><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":138,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/138"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4679"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4736,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4679\/revisions\/4736"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"The](\"https:\/\/news.berkeley.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/PXL_20250417_173111112-1024x576.jpg\")
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<\/a>The Oz System<\/h1>\n
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<\/a>![\"A](\"https:\/\/blogs.mathworks.com\/headlines\/files\/2025\/08\/new-olo.jpg\")
<\/p>\nProving \u201colo\u201d is outside normal vision<\/h1>\n
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