Candy Gao

Dr. O’Toole

Freshman Seminar BIOL190

September 25^th, 2020

When asked about the color of an object. It is easy for us to conclude that one is orange, blue, green, red, pink, grey, or etcetera. From what we have come to understand today, color is photons traveling in waves of varying wavelengths reflected and refracted to be then absorbed by our eyes and interpreted by our brains. Color works in this way wondrous way, making the world come to life. We often jump from the human end of information processing to a conclusion of another object’s true property. As common sense as this may seem, it is, in fact, odd if we are to consider how we define an apple red with a standard irrelevant to the apple itself. It has always occurred to my mind out of curiosity: what if my red is not the same as your red, but it will be hard to find out about it if not implausible. Until one day, my friend found through a colorblind test that he is actually red-green color blind; yet, before then, we have no trouble discussing the redness of an apple.

Red-green color blindness is the most common type of color blindness, which essentially makes it hard for one to make a distinction between red and green colors(National Eye Institute). Among it, there are four types of red-green color blindness. Deuteranomaly is green-weak, whose patients have functional green-sensitive cones that have peak sensitivity closer to the red-sensitive cones. This makes the color, green, less differentiable. Overall, it happens to up to 5% of the male population and 0.35% of the female population(Colblindor). Similarly, the second type is called protanomaly, which is red-weak, causing patients’ visions with less redness.

The other two types of red-green color blindness, deuteranopia, and protanopia are much more severe. They are caused by a lack of cones that receive medium wavelengths, which are green. People with this condition usually “can only distinguish 2 to 3 different hues, whereas somebody with normal vision sees 7 different hues.”(Colblindor) 

The second major branch of color blindness is Blue-yellow color blindness. Comparing to red-green color blindness, this is less common in the population. It causes one to have a hard time distinguishing blue and green, yellow, and red(Naiotnal Eye Institute). It can further be categorized into 2 types, trianomaly and tritanopia. People with trianomaly cannot tell the difference between blue and green; meanwhile, tritanopia patients are incapable of telling apart blue and green, purple and red, and yellow and pink(National Eye Institute).

Lastly, in the most severe cases, one diagnosed with complete color blindness, monochromacy, cannot see colors at all. In their world, colors to them are like the 6th sense to us. It is intangible and indescribable.

Recently, there has been a study on the topic of “Spectral notch filters in glasses enhance color vision for those with red-green CVD”. This recent finding discovered a wearable tool that helps red-green colorblind people to gain a better grasp of color contrasts. Scientists designed filter glasses((EnChroma glasses)) to increase the separation between color channels so that patients with red-green CVD can better distinguish colors they could not naturally. After trials, it is documented throughout the two weeks of wearing the glasses that, without glasses, subjects have experienced an increase in response to chromatic contrast response(Mandal).

With this new invention coming to life, it is not hard to imagine a future where people with colorblindness of all extents may experience a world of standardized color vision. Interestingly enough, humans have come to a virtual agreement that the majority of humans’ vision is what the world is supposed to be like. The apples are red for we recognize and define it as the hue “red”, while the apple is really every color absorbed except the color red. Color blindness, in another sense, may not be an ill condition for it is simply a mismatch of the societal color definition. 

Citation

“Deuteranopia – Red-Green Color Blindness.” Colblindor, www.color-blindness.com/deuteranopia-red-green-color-blindness/.

“Types of Color Blindness.” National Eye Institute, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, www.nei.nih.gov/learn-about-eye-health/eye-conditions-and-diseases/color-blindness/types-color-blindness.

Werner, J.S., et al. (2020) Adaptive Changes in Color Vision from Long-Term Filter Usage in Anomalous but Not Normal Trichromacy. Current Biology.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2020.05.054.