Yes brighter colors helps a little. But to tell the truth it would be greater if we have an option to somehow regulate prehighlight opacity.
Yes it helps to establish right components due mouse hover. But i guess it adds small calculation load and not everyone really need this surfaces prehighlight.
I remember the times when this type of a prehighlite was added in Maya. Lots of guys turned it off. I'm not sure how it warks in Moi3D but in XSI we used
raycust due MouseMove callback to get component under mouse coordinate and it was kinda slow on heavy models.