  Colour information not only helps sustain the survival of animal species by
guiding sexual selection and foraging behaviour, but also is an important
factor in the cultural and technological development of our own species. This
is illustrated by examples from the visual arts and from state-of-the-art
imaging technology, where the strategic use of colour has become a powerful
tool for guiding the planning and execution of interventional procedures. The
functional role of colour information in terms of its potential benefits to
behavioural success across the species is addressed in the introduction here to
clarify why colour perception may have evolved to generate behavioural success.
It is argued that evolutionary and environmental pressures influence not only
colour trait production in the different species, but also their ability to
process and exploit colour information for goal-specific purposes. We then leap
straight to the human primate with insight from current research on the
facilitating role of colour cues on performance training with precision
technology for image-guided surgical planning and intervention. It is shown
that local colour cues in 2D images generated by a surgical fisheye camera help
individuals become more precise rapidly across a limited number of trial sets
in simulator training for specific manual gestures with a tool. The
progressively facilitating effect of a local colour cue on performance
evolution in a video controlled simulator task can be explained in terms of
colour-based figure-ground segregation guiding attention towards local image
parts, with an immediate cost on performance time, and a lasting long-term
benefit in terms of greater task precision.
