If color blindness is the inability to distinguish certain colors, what would you call the ability to distinguish colors more acutely than the average person? I can see diffences between the colors of two adjacent objects, whereas other people see the colors as matching.
And I’m also wondering if some people can see a broader spectrum of colors, i.e. further into the ultraviolet or infrared? It doesn’t make sense that everyone’s vision has exactly the same parameters, but I don’t recall ever hearing of any experiments along these lines.
I don’t think there is a word for what you describe, but you could be said to have a lower threshold for color or a higher color acuity or sensitivity.
When I was in undergrad chemistry, we used a spectrometer regularly in the lab. On the first day, we charted everyone’s ability to see the extemes of the visual spectrum. I forget the exact wavelengths, but I saw violet closer to the ultraviolet range than any of the other people in my group. When they looked, they saw nothing. There was a much narrower range for sensitivity in the infrared region.
A fellow student at university was colour blind. But instead of having just no red cones and green cones on his retina(?) he had extra blue ones. So theoretically he was three times as sensitive to blue light/colour as the rest of us.
But that said, presumably the brain compensates and adjusts somewhat, so things wouldn’t look ultra blue all the time. Like when you come out of a green tent and the sky looks pink for a while, because your eyes/brain had adjusted to the over-green light inside the tent, to make it look normal.
Oddly enough, (didnt read the tetrachromat link) tetrachromats cant take advantage of their “extra” cone. The retina is the limiting factor as the signals from three types of cones are combined into a 3 channel system in order to get the info down the optic nerve. Even if someone had 4 distinct classes of cones there would be no way to use that info because its thrown out right after the cones.
With regard to the OP: anacdotal evidence means nothing. Sorry.
No offence, but that’s not accurate and it’s rather arrogant. The OP has witnessed a phenomenon and is asking for a scientfic/medical explanation for it.
Yes - the OP may be deluded, or even lying. But even if mistaken, the OP’s perception that they are able to distinguish between two colours seen by others as identical is still valid and interesting.
The next time you want to curtly (rudely IMO) dismiss someone’s entire OP you might want to spell the grounds of your argument correctly. It’s “anecdotal”.
In the book Future War {n/f}, an old experiment in artificial plastic corneas pre-WW2 is mentioned. Replacing diseased/damaged corneas with a specific type of plastic implant allowed the patient to see into the near-ultraviolet range of the spectrum.
This allowed for better night vision, & was used by the British to watch for UV signaling devices used by Germany to signal people ashore from submarines at night.
It was a very rude comment for this forum. You couldn’t be bothered to read the link provided by Terminus Est and instead decided to dismiss the OP, rather than actually answering it.
istara is perfectly right. That was a rude comment. In addition, anecdotal insights can be very valuable to the medical practitioner or researcher. If you are either, and you dismiss anecdotal information as easily as you did in your post, I hope you’re not practicing or researching anywhere near me.
I didnt have to read that link because i knew what it contained. I have since read it–my initial perspective confirmed.
Again, read the first paragraph of my intial post. I was being curt, not rude. The author of this thead is color normal and dealing with color deficient folks. There is no way that she can distinguish between colors that a color normal individual cant–simple as that.
Are you suggesting that alone among the senses, color vision has zero sensitivity variation from individual to individual? What fact of physiology makes color vision so stable whereas there exist large differences in hearing ability, sensitivity to heat and touch, smell and taste among different individuals?
Actually, I was talking to a researcher in the field of human vision last week, and we were discussing this very topic. The mothers of red/green colour deficient boys have a gene for the normal green and red cones, and a gene for a red cone and a “shifted” green cone (so that its frequency response is nearer to that of the red cone). These are carried on the X chromosomes. It would seem that in these women, all three variations are expressed, so the woman has the blue cones (which are on a different chromosome), red cones, green cones, and “shifted” green cones. It does appear that women with this combination can distinguish between colours more acutely than a colour normal person.
Actually, this doesn’t apply to my experience, because I’m a man. I’m wondering if there are any genetic anomalies in some men that might produce similar results.
But more than that, I’m wondering if this has to do with the fact that I work with color more than most people, both in my work and avocations. Is it possible that this is simply a result of learning, much as a musician can distinguish two similar sounds that non-musical people would perceive as the same?
I seem to be able to distinguish colors better than the average person. The testing lab where I work does a lot of tests which determine whether exposure to extreme conditions (heat, cold, humidity, harsh chemicals) will discolor plastic objects. Because of this, everyone who gets hired goes thru a couple of standardized tests in which they must sort a bunch of colored chips from light to dark. There are about 20 or so chips, and the change in value between the chips is pretty small. I’m one of only two people here who got them all correct.
Like the OP, I can see slight differences in color that most people don’t notice. Which is kinda ironic, since I’m also severely nearsighted.
Why not? Photon detection occurs at the molecular level, so detecting a different color would require a completely different chemical pathway. This isn’t something that can be easily fooled around with.