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Scientists hijacked the human eye to get it to see a brand-new color. It's called 'olo.'

Using an experimental technique called "Oz," researchers stimulated the human retina such that people saw a brand-new color.

"The ultimate goal is to provide programmable control over every photoreceptor [light-sensing cell] in the retina," primarily for research purposes, said co-first author James Fong, a doctoral student in computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. "Although this has not been achieved to that level, the method we present in the current study demonstrates that a lot of the key principles are possible in practice," Fong told Live Science in an email. For instance, participants cannot look directly at the Oz display, Fong noted, because the cones at the very center of the retina are very small, making it difficult to localize the laser light.

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