Discrimination of cone contrast changes as evidence for colour constancy in cerebral achromatopsia

One proposed mechanism for underpinning colour constancy is computation of the relative activity of cones within one class – cone ratios, or cone contrasts – between surfaces in a fixed scene undergoing a change in illuminant. Although there is evidence that cone ratios do determine colour appearance under many conditions, the site or sites of their computation is unknown. Here, we report that a cerebrally achromatopsic observer, MS, displayed evidence of colour constancy in asymmetric colour matching tasks and was able to discriminate changes in cone ratios for simple, but not complex scenes. We hypothesise that the site of local cone-ratio computation is therefore early in the visual system, probably retinal.