What’s the mechanism behind translating a wave frequency to a color for a human?
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Adding to the other answers: when your cones perceive wavelengths they don’t just make your neurons associated with that color fire… They fire faster or slower depending on how close the wavelength is to the ideal wavelength that cone is associated with.
Your cones ideal wavelengths are roughly red, green, and blue.
So, if you see purple you might get red firing at 100, blue firing at 90, and green firing at 10 and your brain perceives that as purple.
Of courses your cones are a mechanical biological process that has some flaws. For example, if your cones get too “tired” they will stop firing. That means you can fool your cones into tiring out then looking at a color and see something completely different.
There are also color combos your eyes can’t see because the cones pick up more than just their ideal colors so there’s no way to shut up certain cones in order to get the signal for specific colors. Wild huh?
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