Maxwell's Spot

One of my scientific heroes is James Clerk Maxwell. Maxwell (1831–1879) was a Scottish physicist known for developing Maxwell’s equations of electricity and magnetism, and for his work on statistical mechanics. But Maxwell also studied the eye and was an early researcher of color vision.

One of Maxwell’s interesting but not staggeringly important discoveries was Maxwell’s Spot. If for no other reason that I am a big Maxwell fan, today I want to examine his spot. I’ll base my discussion on a 2003 article titled “The Differential Contribution of Macular Pigments and Foveal Anatomy to the Perception of Maxwell’s Spot and Haidinger’s Brushes” by Gary Misson, Rebekka Heitmar, Richard Armstrong, and Stephen Anderson in the journal Vision. I will quote from it with references removed. The article begins

Normally sighted individuals can perceive a short-lived darkened spot at the point of fixation while viewing a plain white surface through a dichroic filter transmitting a mixture of long- and short-wavelength lights. This entoptic phenomenon, known as Maxwell’s spot (MS), was first described in detail by James Clerk Maxwell in 1856.

One of my goals today will be to merely explain what unfamiliar words mean. First, what is a “dichroic filter”? A dichroic filter uses interference rather than absorption to filter light. Interference was discussed only briefly in Intermediate Physics for Medicine and Biology, when Russ Hobbie and I described optical coherence tomography. A dichroic filter is typically made up of many thin layers, each which can reflect light. It creates colors in a similar way that a thin film of oil on the surface of water reflects some colors and not other. It depends on if the reflected or transmitted light from different layers interfere constructively or destructively. One advantage of a dichroic filter is that it can be very selective about what light is transmitted.

Next is “entoptic.” An entoptic phenomenon is a visual effect that arises from a source or structure within the eye itself. Examples of vision phenomena that are NOT entoptic include hallucinations (arising in the brain) and mirages (arising in the optical refraction of light in the environment). Entoptic phenomena would include floaters arising from the shadow of tiny objects in the vitreous humor of the eye, and phosphenes arising from mechanical or electrical excitation of the retina. Whatever Maxwell’s Spot is, it happens because of something within the eye itself. Misson et al. continue

The most widely accepted hypothesis proposed for the origin of the peripheral zones in [Maxwell’s Spot], and its documented perceptual variations, is absorption of blue light by macular pigments that result in a reduction of foveal photoreceptor illumination.

First, what is the “macula?” It is an oval-shaped region in the center of the retina with a diameter of about 5 mm where there is a high density of cone cells responsible for color vision. At the center of the macula is a region of about 1.5 mm diameter that has the highest density of cone cells called the fovea.

To fully understand the vision, you need to realize that humans have what’s called an inverted retina. That is, the light-sensing rods and cones are at the back of the retina, behind the retina’s neurons and capillaries, so light must pass through these other structures before reaching the light-sensing cells. You may ask, why does the retina have this seemingly backwards structure? I’ll tell you. I don’t know. But it does.

The macula also contains pigments that absorb light. Like the neurons and capillaries, these pigments (at least some of them) are located in front of the rods and cones. Pigments are molecules that absorb certain wavelengths of light. Two of the main macular pigments are called lutein and zeaxanthin. These are carotenoids, which are the pigments that give color to pumpkins, carrots, and daffodils. In general, carotenoids absorb blue and violet light. So, the reason a carrot is orange is that when white light shines on it the caretenoids absorb much of the blue light, so the light reflected by the carrot (which is the light you see) is mainly the red and orange light that was not absorbed. This is also why the macula itself looks yellow when viewed with a ophthalmoscope. 

Figure 3 from Misson et al. (2003). The image was obtained using optical coherence tomography. Light comes in from above. The bright areas on the top left and right are the macular pigments. There is also a lot of pigment below the retina, but that does play a key role in producing Maxwell’s Spot.

So, now we get to the cause of Maxwell’s Spot. Misson and his coauthors write

The results of this study support the theory that the principal mechanism of [Maxwell’s Spot] generation is pre-receptoral screening by macular pigment.

In other words, the pigments in front of the macula (through which the incoming light must pass to reach the rods and cones) filters out some of the blue light. As white light enters the eye, the macular pigments remove some of the blue, but the rest of the retina which does not have these pigments lets all the light through. So, a white screen appears white except at the center spot right where the eye is fixated on with highest spatial resolution and best color vision, and that spot is darker and redish. That, dark red region is Maxwell’s Spot. Note that this phenomenon arises because of the distribution of pigments within the eye; it is entoptic. Because everybody’s pigment distribution and macula arrangement can vary, so can everyone’s perception of Maxwell’s Spot.

Maxwell’s Spot was not Maxwell’s only contribution to vision physiology. He was one of the founders of the theory of trichromatic color vision, which states that there are three types of cone cells in the retina (red, green, and blue) that are responsible for our perception of color. There is no telling how much more Maxwell might have contributed to both physics and physiology if he had not died of cancer at the tragically young age of 48.