Cells in the parvo system can distinguish between two colors at any
relative brightness of the two. Cells in the color-blind magno system, on the
other hand, are analogous to a black-and-white photograph in the way
they function: they signal information about the brightness of surfaces but not
about their colors. For any pair of colors there is a particular brightness
ratio at which two colors, for example red and green, will appear as the same
shade of gray in a black-and-white photograph, hence any border between them
will vanish. Similarly at some relative red-to-green brightness level, the red
and green will appear identical to the magno system. The red and green are then
called equiluminant. A border between two equiluminant colors has color contrast
but no luminance contrast. The author uses all of the following
in the discussion in the third paragraph EXCEPT:
A. an example.
B. definition of terms.
C. contrast.
D. a rhetorical question.
E. analogy.