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Spectral Sensitivity of Rods in Human Retina
Spectral Sensitivity of Rods in Human Retina
There are two types of photoreceptors in the human retina. Cones, which are responsible for color vision, are most sensitive to green, red, and blue. Rods are "color blind", but are sensitive to light changes. Rods detect light by isomerization of the rhodopsin molecules they contain. More specifically, rods absorb light (photons), thus energizing and changing the shape of these molecules. While rods do not mediate color vision, isomerization is neither constant nor a monotonic function of the light emission wavelength . Experimental studies have shown that rods are most sensitive to wavelengths of light around 498 nm (green-blue) and insensitive to wavelengths longer than about 640 nm (red).
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