Evolution of Neural Computations: Mantis Shrimp and Human Color Decoding

Abstract

Mantis shrimp and primates both possess good color vision, but the neural implementation in the two species is very different, a reflection of the largely unrelated evolutionary lineages of these creatures. Mantis shrimp have scanning compound eyes with 12 classes of photoreceptors, and have evolved a system to decode color information at the front-end of the sensory stream. Primates have image-focusing eyes with three classes of cones, and decode color further along the visual-processing hierarchy. Despite these differences, we report a fascinating parallel between the computational strategies at the color-decoding stage in the brains of stomatopods and primates. Both species appear to use narrowly tuned cells that support interval decoding color identification.