Re: Human vision in the near-infrared realm

Oduvaldo,
        Wow! You pushed me past my limit on this question!!! I went to my
friends in the military for more "illumination" on the question. The
answers that I received are very technical and are included below. I defer
to Dr. Fred Previc and Dr. John Taboada.
        The short answer is "yes...but" with deference to the research
below. Being that his work was never followed up, that I can find, I do
not have much more to go on.

Pete "blinded by the light" Naegele

From:   Taboada John Civ USAFSAM/FEC

Subject: Human vision in the near-infrared realm (fwd)

Fred,
        Back in the early 80's I proposed to give human vision responsivity 
in thenear infrared by preparing the molecular state of the
retinal chromophoreswith IR light pulses.  I proposed to pump rhodopsin
with ultrashort laser IRpulses to  achieve a metastable vibrational state
of this critical visionmolecule and in turn make it sensitive to near IR
photons to 1.3 microns.The AFOSR later,1984, sponsored my research work in
this area for about 3years.  I showed that 11-cis retinal isomerization
in-vitro could bemodulated by 1064nm picosecond light pulses.  Other
things came up and basicresearch went into hard times ending my work but
there is something in those results. As far as I know I was the first to
propose this idea.
John



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