Several years ago the artist, Concetta Antico (Concetta Antico) realized that the richness of colors that she sees in the outside world, inaccessible to the view of others, and is the result of genetic mutations. Turned out to be.what is the symptom of tetrachromate — perception of the visible range of the spectrum of electromagnetic radiation by combinations of four basic colors, not three colors, as in normal people.
The normal human eye contains three types of receptors, the opsins, which are sensitive in the following areas:
- long waves (Long Wavelength Sensitive, LWS, 560 nm, red);
- medium wave (Middle Wavelength Sensitive MWS, 530 nm, green);
- short waves (Short Wavelength Sensitive, SWS, 414 nm, purple, bluish), this receptor is mutated from ultraviolet receptor as a result of the evolution of primates about 30-90 million years ago.
The receptor that perceives a green color, was the result of a gene duplication of the red receptor. Both genes encoding these receptors are located on the X chromosome. Because of this encoding in some women may appear four-color vision. Since each receptor in two copies, replacing one will result in the genome are encoded two, but three of the receptor.
Some scientists suggest that tetrachromacy inherent 2-3% of women or more, but it actually proved to probably need training. American artist Concetta Antico, has become the first person in the world with scientifically proven functional tetrachromacy.
One of the pictures of Concete the Antico, the world’s first confirmed tetrachromat
In the past few years, Antico has undergone a series of tests that confirmed the presence of differences in vision. To determine what congenital tetrachromacy, Antico has developed to the stage of functional ability, scientists from the University of Nevada compared her vision with another tetragramaton (not the artist), as well as the vision of trichromat artist and trichromate, have no artistic training. The study is published in the journal GLIMPSE.
In tests comparing the sensitivity to the colors with different wavelengths. The Antico showed increased sensitivity to reddish hues that coincides exactly with the theoretically predicted result, based on the availability of additional types of receptors. In particular, it is much better distinguish between colors in low light conditions, e.g. at dusk she sees a bright colored scene.
The vertical axis represents the difference of the Euclidean distance in the color cube RGB in results between participants. A value of 0 corresponds to no difference in difference colors
As predicted, scientists, the Antico showed a much better result than the other tetrachromat, not an artist. This may mean that the existence of “super-powers” required many years of training.
To explain the features of view tetrachromate the authors of scientific work lead photo display sites in which exhibits sensitivity optional fourth receptor type.
Here’s another illustration that gives you the opportunity to imagine what shades sees tetrachromat. Although we are not able to see it, but his impressionistic paintings of Concetta Antico how would you improve them so the shades became accessible to our vision.
