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Glasses That Hack Around Colorblindness

Posted by Unknown on from the except-for-yellow dept.

MatthewVD writes "In 2006, researcher Mark Changizi came up with a novel theory for why humans evolved with color vision: to detect social cues and emotions in others. He built glasses called 02Amps to enhance perception of blood pooling. Some hospitals have tried using the glasses to see bruising that's not visible unaided, or help nurses find veins. But it turns out now that the glasses might be able to fix some forms of colorblindness, too."

25 of 97 comments (clear)

  1. color blindness by girlintraining · · Score: 3, Informative

    Actually, most forms of color blindness is NOT due to a defect in the eye, but in the visual cortex. I learned about this in graphic design for my color theory class. When you look at a color for awhile, and then look at a white surface, the after-image will be a specific color. Whether you're color blind or not... that after-image coloring is the same. So red and green result in a different after-image color -- even if you're red/green colorblind.

    Anyway, yes, having red/green perception does enable you to see subtle changes in skin tone, etc., but the idea of TSA agents wearing them is a bit frightening. This is the same agency that up until recently was irradiating its own clients, refusing to disclose the amount of radiation, and causing cancer to its employees. They also have been frisking children and grabbing people's balls... they're totally incompetent. I'd rather not give them special "x-ray glasses" so they can misuse those as well, saying they saw something nobody else could and that's why you're now getting a lubed finger in your private parts.

    Other than that, Rock on. Good science.

    --
    #fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
    1. Re:color blindness by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Informative

      I thought red/green color blindness was associated with a defective gene for a photoreceptor protein, coded on the X chromosome. The defective gene produces an abnormal protein that responds to light in the "yellow" spectrum, causing the subject's retina to encode all red and yellow light as the same color.

      Given that the gene does nothing to nerve function or distribution, perhaps the neurological effect is a result of neuroplasticity, resulting from the brain getting identical signals from different neural bundles in the eye? (Eg, eye does a LOT of signal encoding before it reaches the brain, so a loss of signal fidelity in the eye will result in a difference in higher level processing in the visual cortex, to make up for it. This could explain the retention of the after-image effects.)

      Has there been a multidiscipline study conducted? As is, this data would seem in contradiction of the genetics implicated, and the existence of tetrachromatic females. If the difference was mostly neurological, and not the result of an ocular anomaly, then tetrachromats should not exist.

    2. Re:color blindness by DrScott · · Score: 5, Informative

      Hereditary color "blindness" (which can run the gamut from a mild color deficiency to severe color perceptual loss) is most commonly due to defects in the photochemicals in the cone photoreceptors. The milder forms involve shifts in the wavelength that the pigment absorbs the most. The more severe forms involve the functional loss of one photopigment. These disorders are genetic in nature. However, there are also acquired cases of color blindness caused by neuronal damage that is post-receptor, such as in optic nerve disease. Less common is color blindness due to cortical damage, such as achromatopsia.

    3. Re:color blindness by Runaway1956 · · Score: 2

      No citation? I'm with wierd_w here, I learned the same thing he's learned. If the problem were in the cortex, some of my own observations would be invalid.

      I can pick up something, and it looks black, or blue, or whatever, depending on it's actual color. Carrying that item out into bright sunlight can sometimes reveal that it's some kind of purple. The sunlight doesn't help me to actually say what color it is, only that there is red in it.

      While still in high school, I bought a very shiny black car. My Mama said it wasn't black, but maroon. I had that car for more than a week, before a bright sunshiny day allowed me to see the red. Apparently, the brain can process the red and the green, if the eyes are supplied with enough of it.

      Of course, those are just personal observations, with no "science" behind them.

      --
      "Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
    4. Re:color blindness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      There are two different types of red-green color blidness, basically resulting from the lack of functional red or green cones. Both red and green cones are sensitive to red and green, but in different amounts. Missing one type (or having a very low count of active cones of one type) won't make you blind to that color (i.e., objects painted with that color won't appear as black), it will just make you unable to distinguish reliably between the two hues.

      That's why color-blind "simulations" typically show yellow (because it's what you get by mixing red and green). In reality, most color blind people see in red-blue or green-blue (in terms of signal) - though both red and green overlap onto yellow and even onto each other at cone level. What those people call it internally (red, orange, yellow, green) is up to them; mostly they'll try to figure out (from experience) what a trichromat would see, and they'll call it that.

      If you look at a cone spectral sensitivity curve, it should be pretty obvious. The brain only gets three signals, but each signal is actually reporting a wide range of frequencies, and they all overlap to some extent.

      The OP is wrong, BTW. Color blindness is due to defects in the eye, causing one or more foveal cone types to be missing or inactive.

      The after image effect he mentions is from a study that showed that partially color-blind people (generally termed "color weak") can sometimes distinguish the hue of after-images better than they distinguish the hue of the original image. In some cases, this means people who are just (very) color-weak can be classified as color-blind by basic Ishihara tests. That's where the visual cortex plays a role (by making some hues more "relevant" than others). It doesn't change anything about the actual eye defects.

  2. Colorblindness? by supersat · · Score: 4, Informative

    There's an app for that: http://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/15/dankam/

    1. Re:Colorblindness? by SternisheFan · · Score: 3, Interesting

      There's an app for that: http://dankaminsky.com/2010/12/15/dankam/

      Mod+1 UP! 'Dankam' has been a godsend for many people with imperfect color vision.

      I knew a guy who tested with a great aptitude for electronics, but near the end of the course realized he couldn't differentiate between the different color coded wires, instead he got work in home improvement field. This app maybe would've allowed him to pursue that electronics career.

    2. Re:Colorblindness? by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 2

      The goggles, they do something!

      --
      systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
  3. Fuck that by YodasEvilTwin · · Score: 2
    From TFA:

    The eyewear is also potentially useful for police and security officers– imagine if a TSA agent could more easily perceive nervousness

    Yeah, we totally need more low-paid half-trained monkeys jumping on people at the slightest sign of a natural response to said monkeys.

  4. Not a cure by Avidiax · · Score: 5, Informative

    These glasses don't cure colorblindness at all. They allow some colorblind people to pass some color-blindness tests by making them literally blind to certain colors (by filtering them with the lenses). The article mentioned that a person shouldn't drive with one version of these glasses because they'd be unable to see a yellow traffic light.

    These glasses are interesting for other reasons, but they are not a practical cure for color blindness.

  5. Wonderful by fustakrakich · · Score: 2

    And in 20 years, when the patents run out, they might even become affordable.

    --
    “He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
  6. Thank-You: You've answered something for me... apk by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Anyway, yes, having red/green perception does enable you to see subtle changes in skin tone, etc" - by girlintraining (1395911) on Monday February 04, @07:44PM (#42792113)

    I have this condition (red/green colorblindness) - So, per my subject-line though - & what I meant about that:

    I've always wondered why I could tell folks were about to get very ill (if not die), because their skintone changes, to me @ least, and RADICALLY, when it happens (also when they're about ready to "kick-the-bucket" too) - I've never been wrong about it either.

    In fact, sadly for me - I saw it right before my grandma passed... It was SO apparent to me with her, & so much so, I couldn't bear to look directly @ her!

    She called me to come drive to her home, many miles from mine, just to toss out her trash, which was only a 15 yards perhaps from her front door...

    She needed me to since she was VERY "out-of-it" from having her carotid artery & jugular veins clotted so much, she wasn't getting enough blood to her brain - she described it as what you feel like when you're ready to pass out as best she could to me (& they were afraid to operate to clear it because of her age, 94)...

    This occurred in 2007 perhaps a week before her death.

    I more recently in 2012, also with a tenant of mine recently (who was quite ill & getting worse, and did, due to various things)...

    I am not joking about this either. It actually scares me. It's like seeing the 'grim reaper' coming around...

    Anyhow/anyways: I can't explain it any other way. It'd be like trying to teach a blind man to see the color orange...

    However, on a lighter note: Color-Blindness is useful also is used by the military, since camoflage cannot deceive folks with my type of vision... which also, oddly, messes us up on NORMAL "lantern tests" for color-vision, but also allows us to see that which those with normal color vision, cannot (there are lantern tests for that as well).

    APK

    P.S.=> And, there you are - Thank-you for your knowing that (I am assuming it IS truth, because of the things I've noted above)... apk

  7. Wait a minute by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

    Don't most primates have some form of trichromatic colour vision? We're not the only mammals who see three colours.

    1. Re:Wait a minute by wierd_w · · Score: 2

      Frm what I remember reading, mamals actually LOST a color receptor early in their evolution, then re-evolved a new one later in the primate family, and in a few others, like elephants.

      Birds actually have much better color fidelity than any mammal, having never lost the ancestral color receptor genes.

    2. Re:Wait a minute by viperidaenz · · Score: 2

      Mammals lost two colour receptors. We went from four to two.

      Primates got one back around 40 million years ago when we lost the ability to make our own vitamin C. We needed to be able to find more brightly coloured fruit or get scurvy and die.

    3. Re:Wait a minute by wierd_w · · Score: 2

      32.

      I learned about it in science class in 6th grade. The teacher was Mrs Mellen, the wife of the 8th grade math teacher. She had red/green color blindness, and often graded with a green pen instead of a red one. The loss of ancestral genes was reported in the lifescience textbook, but not covered in class.

      That year, we did a number of interesting and fun lifesciences experiments on ourselves concerning genetic expression and heredity. It's when I discovered that I am either not my mother's child, or that I have bombay phenotype, because my mom is blood type AB+, where I, and all my siblings, are type O+. (Negative result on blood antigen test, with repeat trials).

      Also learned I am one of the minority with a special bitterness receptor, and that my mouth's natural pH is alkaline instead of acidic.

      She and the art teacher (Ms. Frakes) used to share the classroom with block schedules, alternating every other day, until the middleschool got expanded, then each got their own digs.

      the expansion was completed in the third quarter of that year.

      I still remember the particle board smell of the new science room, and how cold it was. (They moved teachers and classes into the room before the windows were installed, and had particleboard up in place of glass.)

      The subject of my unusual memory has come up before here. A few posters suggested I have my brain examined by the local university neurology dept. :D

  8. Re:What a load of BS by wierd_w · · Score: 2

    I'd put the functionality on the same mechanism as an audio filter. The brain may be more predisposed to looking at higher fidelity data than on subtle aspects of the data, with a full spectrum input than from an attenuated input.

    Take for instance, how a background voice on a recording may become more prominent after a highpass filter, that basically just kills the highband. It does nothing to enhance or change the lowband, but the lack of highband makes you more aware of the lowband.

  9. Interesting that a site posting about this... by norpy · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Interesting that the site doesn't render any content at all without javascript, pretty ironic for an article about disabilities.

    I will give them one thing, their content seems to be accessible to someone with a screen reader.

  10. Re:Wanted: single-eye correction by 12WTF$ · · Score: 2

    I have it.
    I am mildly red-green colour blind and twenty years ago had a corneal lens implant after an elastic luggage strap (boing...bang, OUCH!) damaged my lens.
    The clear perspex lens in the one eye and very slightly red (blood) tinged natural lens in the other means that I am now much better at distinguishing colour differences that were once too subtle.

    --
    Cryonics - Keep cool and carry on.
  11. Re:Spectral shift by wierd_w · · Score: 5, Informative

    Not theoretical. Empirically observed.

    The mechanism at work is known as "favored X". Essentially, any given cell in a woman's body will favor expression of one or the other of her X chromosomes. This includes retinal tissues. Women who are carriers of red-green colorblindness will have a nearly random distribution of cone cells that favor expression of the defective receptor protein, resulting in tetrachromatic vision. However, since the mutation is recessive, the distribution is usually not that high, meaning being female, and carrying the mutation does not garantee tetracromacy.

    relavent wikipedia page, which has some citations.

  12. Ethnicity and tropical countries by G3ckoG33k · · Score: 2

    How about ethnicity in tropical countries and blushing? I come from Europe and don't meet dark colored people very often so I'm not sure if I'm way off. But can you really see a very dark colored person blush? If not and if humans evolved in Africa, blushing may be a really weak cause for retaining something as complex as color vision. And as most of our non-human relatives have color vision the theory has lost all credibility.

  13. Re:I'm colorblind... by wierd_w · · Score: 2

    I just took this color perception test and scored a 4. Perfect score is 0. Worst score is 1520 or something like that. I doubt my issue is colorblindness. According to that test I have near perfect color acuity. :D

  14. Many primates have trichromatic vision. by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 2
    Humans are not the only one with trichromatic vision. In fact many of the primates do. So the theory that color vision evolved to tell blood flow and to pick emotional cues has it backwards. They had color vision already, they might have deployed it to detect emotional cues and that might have led to social groups where intent of other members could be predicted. This could have been the difference that led to the branching off of a set of social/gregarious primates (Chimps, Bonobos and Hominids) from the rest of the apes and primates.

    Primates started specializing in a fruitarian diet some 10 or 20 million years ago. They had traded the sense of smell to stereoscopic vision earlier to become arboreal (to live in the tree branches and leap from one branch to another). So they developed the vision abilities further to tell a ripe fruit from raw one and to tell edible fresh shoots from mature leaves, that led to color vision. Another side effect of this shift is the lost the ability to synthesize vitamin C. All mammals could, but among the fruitarian primates, the loss is not debilitating because fruits were rich in vitamin C. Color vision and lack of vitamin C synthesis are the hallmarks of the primate line that became social and gregarious.

    [It goes without saying, they did not do by deliberate thinking and planning.]

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
  15. Re:I hacked - by VanessaE · · Score: 2

    Although you're correct when you say the glasses aren't hacked, your definition of that word is slightly wrong - just enough so to change the meaning of the word "hacked".

    Hacking is manipulating a system to do something it was NOT intended to do.

    Moving "not" two words to the left as I did changes it from "we focused on what our system can and cannot do" to "we only focused on what it *can* do."

    Plus, you're misreading the summary title: it is the glasses that are, themselves, allegedly performing the hack, not the wearer/designer/producer thereof.

  16. easier for primates to see fruit in trees/plants by peter303 · · Score: 2

    Vegetarians tend to be tri-chromatic; carnovores bi-chromatic or less.

    Some human females are quad-chromatic. They may have two different variants of the blue-yellow gene on their two X-chomosomes. They may see color more vividly than males.