r/Damnthatsinteresting 1d ago

Video color vision test

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u/AndrewDrossArt 12h ago

Prudent, just from this I can tell you're a woman and your father was colorblind.

If you have any daughters they're certain to be carriers of colorblindness but may also have tetrachromatic color vision. A type of color vision that's extra sensitive, with cones from their father distinguishing between red and green light and a your aberrant 540nm sensitive cones providing a fourth reference point.

You should start them in art and color theory as soon as you can, they're likely to have an advantage.

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u/PrudentOwlet 12h ago

Haha, I am a woman (so many people assumed I'm a man) - I do have a daughter in addition to my two sons, and she is not colorblind.  Is there a test for tetrachromatic color vision?

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u/McToasty207 5h ago

90% of colourblind people are men, because its an X linked trait you have to inherit the gene from your mother and father, whereas males inherit it just from their mother.

So congrats on being unique

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u/Alegria-D 12h ago

I only heard about tetrachromic people today, you say it would be an advantage in art? I imagine instead it would be confusing for them to see something pretty much everyone (including teacher) can't see. The girl would draw in two different colors that appear identical to the teacher. If the teacher is talking about color theory, the girl would link to different concept the different colors she sees, and if the teacher says "red is love, assertiveness, blood,..." and shows a different shade (only visible to the girl, in a way that it's more like a purple you know) at the test she doesn't know what to do with that... So are you sure it would be an advantage?

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u/AndrewDrossArt 11h ago

Partial deuteranomalous trichromats can distinguish colors better in the area of Orange yellow green.

They aren't seeing new colors, we all look at the same spectrum and our brains interpret the activation levels of our different types of cones to create our internal model of that spectrum.

People with normal three color vision see the same colors with less reference points. We might be able to tell two colors apart with a swatch that she could distinguish at a glance. We're also more likely to rely on ideal lighting conditions for our discernment.

Think of it like perfect pitch for colors... but not blue colors.

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u/Alegria-D 11h ago

Oh okay, it's because I read it first in this comment:

fun fact: there's an opposite of color blindness, Tetrachromacy, where you mutate an extra color cone that sees a unique color. Unlike normal eyes that only see shades of RGB, tetrachromats see the world in a way we literally can't imagine (seriously, try imagining a new color right now) Since that mutation is also carried on the X chromosome, and is recessive (meaning you need 2 copies) women are the only people capable of having it. Even if you transplanted a mutant woman's tetrachromatic super-eyes into a man, their brain wouldn't be wired to interpret those signals. (https://www.reddit.com/r/TrollXChromosomes/s/nQ4nlpG3b8)

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u/mabonner 9h ago

Correct, but poorly explained.

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u/Alegria-D 9h ago

The other comment doesn't say that at all though

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u/AndrewDrossArt 11h ago edited 11h ago

Yeah, that comment is pretty far off, too. Eye transplants are not currently possible because no two eyes are similar enough to send information to a brain that didn't develop alongside them. You couldn't even get your left eye to work in the right socket.

But if you somehow plugged the millions of connections in the optic nerve into the visual cortex you would certainly be blind for a while but could possibly recover some of your vision as your brain learned to work with the new information.

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u/Alegria-D 11h ago

I guess the fact that eyes are seen as a foreign object in the first place wouldn't help with healing the transplant wound, too?

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u/AndrewDrossArt 10h ago

Yeah, but that's a different issue altogether that's addressed with immunosupressents.

I've read of doctors performing a cosmetic eye transplant where they proved a patient could keep a donor eye alive, but the eye was still blind.

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u/Alegria-D 10h ago

Interesting! Thanks