Striking absence of long-lasting effects of early color deprivation on monkey vision

A monkey (Macaca fascicularis) spent its first three months under far red illumination that made color vision impossible. It developed normal spectral sensitivity. In the present study we examined two aspects of color vision that presumably reflect cortical connectivity. In the first part of this article we show that chromatic induction was also unaffected: a blue surrounding made a gray target appear to be yellow to the monkey. At five months of age, the deprived monkey did not readily use color to recognize objects, although it was able to do so if necessary. In the second part of this article we show that, as an adult, the monkey was quite willing to use color to categorize objects. We conclude that early color deprivation does not result in long lasting deficits in color vision.