Brains that don’t see in greyscale first over-rely on colours: Project Prakash study Premium

Project Prakash study explains how newborns develop color vision, impacting overall vision development and object recognition in visually impaired children.

The world has many colours and being able to see them is a great source of joy. But a newborn baby mostly sees the world in black and white. The photosensitive cone cells in the child’s eyes don’t mature until they’re around four months old. In this time, the brain uses other visual cues to make sense of the world.

In May, a team of Indian and U.S. researchers reported in the journal Science that this delay in developing colour vision is actually important for overall vision development.

“We are able to explain why normal visual development happens the way it does,” study co-lead Priti Gupta, a cognitive neuroscientist, told The Hindu.

Dr. Gupta leads the research team in India for ‘Project Prakash’, a U.S.-based initiative of IIT Delhi, Dr Shroff’s Charity Eye Hospital in New Delhi, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Project Prakash treats and rehabilitates blind children in India. These children helped the researchers shed light on how the brain learns to see.

Humans don’t need colour vision to recognise objects but colours can provide adaptation and survival advantages, Dr. Gupta said.

“If you look at food, you can recognise it without colour. But if something has gone bad, then you need to see the colour of that thing to understand.”