Worth a look.

Impossible Colours

no mention of Octarine I see...

Khai-J-Bach posted at 6:15PM Sun, 24 September 2017 - #4314764

no mention of Octarine I see...

There's a separate entry for Fantasy/Fictional colours, although if you're Tetrachromic you may be able to see it anyhow. ;)

Some interesting stuff about other creatures with massively different colour vision, including the Mantis Shrimp, which can see many more colours than humans. Dodecachromic vision.

I"m curious if this is the theory behind the specialty glasses that are being produced that help color-blind folks see color. I've seen some videos of their first experience with color and it is heart warming!!

If you mean the Enchroma glasses, that's different. They work where the ratio of R, G and B receptors on the retina is out of whack (that's a medical term from 'Dead men Don't Wear Plaid')

The glasses filter out the colour(s) that you have too many receptors for, the brain can then interpret the new 'equalised' input levels to get accurate colours. That's why Enchroma say it can take up to 20 minutes to work, but the longest delay I've seen in those videos is 10-20 seconds.

I don't believe the glasses help to see more colours, just to differentiate better. A person with colour blindness has faulty receptors, so there's nothing that can help expand the colour range. Gene therapy may eventually provide a cure, or finding a way to wire an electronic gadget directly to the visual cortex. As things are now, you can't actually make someone "see" a color their eyes aren't able to distinguish; some kind of filtering has to be involved. Either that, or snake oil.

My son appears to be colour blind so it's a subject I follow.

There is a lot of tosh regarding colour vision out there; an online test claims to be able to allow you to see if you have Tetrachromic vision. It's complete and utter garbage, full of false statements, false claims and a test that cannot possibly work on a computer screen.

I see ... sort of ... but I was thinking of the Enchroma glasses and didn't really understand. I do understand the frustration of visual issues, I have ROP and it creates some weird filtering of vision that is somewhat intrusive on my seeing clearly. It's like I have visual noise moving and vibrating in front of my retina constantly causing hot spots (though the size of a pin-point and billions of them floating in my eye. add a few other features and well, be glad I don't have a driver's license.

Just looked at the Enchroma site. Choosing my words very carefully, I believe they are making some rather broad claims for the effectiveness of their lenses.

Agreed, but I must say that a friend on facebook got one of these as a birthday gift. Showed a video of him putting them on for the first time ... and I saw a 50 year old man suddenly have mannerism of an excited toddler. Can't fake that. BUT, that doesn't mean it would work for everyone. Just certain cases.

Agreed but my point is, you can't make someone see more colours than their eyes are capable of responding to without gene therapy. Lenses can only offer filtering and increase discrimination, usually at the expense of something else. If your colour receptors are faulty or missing, no lens in the entire universe can make them work.

SamTherapy posted at 4:10AM Tue, 26 September 2017 - #4314882

Agreed but my point is, you can't make someone see more colours than their eyes are capable of responding to without gene therapy. Lenses can only offer filtering and increase discrimination, usually at the expense of something else. If your colour receptors are faulty or missing, no lens in the entire universe can make them work.

Totally agree!

The really interesting thing is, it really is possible to hook up more colour channels with gene therapy. It's been done with squirrels and appears to be possible with humans. I'd be up for some of that. I'd love to be able to see into the Ultraviolet range but it seems our lenses filter most of it out anyhow. I can just about see something at the edges of visibility, where certain flowers appear to glow in a way unrelated to their actual colour but I'd love to see the strobe effects they have.

As it happens, I have perfect RGB colour vision - as did my father - but there's always more to see.

Just a note: While you can't make the "impossible" happen, you can make a human brain think that the impossible is happening. That is part of what is behind the Encrhoma tech. It's even possible to, in a way, "retrain" a brain to interpret inputs differently. I have doubts whether this effect can truly be permanent, but I don't have any doubt that it is "possible" to trick the human brain into "seeing differently." An eyeball doesn't "see" anything at all - It responds. The brain does the rest. Of course, as is the case with color-blindness, the brain has limitations on what input it can receive. If you can change that, even by shifting the input like a musician changes keys, you can change how the brain interprets it.

I'm not endorsing the product, just saying that it's possible to do some really funky stuff with how the brain interprets various inputs.

Yes and no. Certain cells in the eye respond to certain colours. If those cells are missing or damaged, the signals don't get to the brain in the first place. Most types of colour blindness are due to a defect in the eye, not the brain. It's possible, assuming the inputs are valid, to give someone a hugely expanded colour range with the right kind of eyes.

As for the brain, yes it's the part that does the actual seeing but as yet, nobody knows how it does it... yet.