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ลำดับตอนที่ #70 : I can see colours you cannot perceive or imagine
I can see colours you cannot perceive or
imagine
A few
years ago, the artist Concetta Antico discovered that she was carrying a
genetic mutation that gave her astonishingly sensitive perception of colour – seeing a spectrum
of distinct shades where we only see one.
As
she told BBC Future in 2014,
even the dullest pebble
on the road shimmered like a kaleidoscope.
“The
little stones jump out at me with oranges, yellows, greens, blues and pinks,”
she says. “I’m kind of shocked when I realise what other people aren’t seeing.”
A
seemingly plain green leaf may burst with vivid red shades, while a punnet of tomatoes is a
multi-coloured palette of tones – Antico claims she can pick out the ripest fruit at a glance,
thanks to subtle differences in its shade that would be invisible to most of
us. “The intense colours are speaking to me all the time,” she says today.
In
the same way that a colour blind person cannot imagine the variety of reds and
greens that most people can see, most of us may not be able to picture the
rainbow she is describing.
Back
in 2014, the scientific research into Antico’s abilities had only just commenced, but today the
investigations are in full swing – with a brand new paper providing some striking insights into her world.
It
had long been known that people with extraordinary vision like Antico should in
theory exist, thanks to an unusual difference in the way their eye is constructed.
Imagine
the retina as a kind of mosaic, composed of different kinds of light-sensitive
cells known as cones. Most of us have three kinds of cones tuned to different
sets of light wavelengths (making us “trichromat”). The light from each part of
a scene will activate these cells to different degrees, with the exact combination
of signals determining the colour we perceive.
Some
women, however, are “tetrachromat”. Thanks to two different mutations on each
of the X chromosomes, they have four cones – increasing the combination of
colours they should be able to see. The mutation isn’t very rare (estimates of
the prevalence vary
and depend on your heritage, but it could be as
high as 47% among women of European descent), but scientists struggled to find
someone who reliably
demonstrated enhanced perception.
Then
Antico came along, passing a string of tests that showed her vision was
different. Studies proved that her tetrachromacy gave her enhanced vision in
low lighting – allowing her to see astonishingly vivid scenes at dusk, for instance. After BBC
Future broke the story, she soon became famous as the “woman with rainbow
vision”.
Even
so, many questions remained. Given that many women may be carrying the
mutation, why do so few people prove to have such astonishing vision, for
instance? “One possibility is that you need early training to capitalise on the
signal,” says Kimberly Jameson at the University of California, Irvine, who has
tested Antico extensively. Antico is an artist, who has paid close attention to
subtle variations in colour for almost all of her life. “I was fairly manic,” Antico says
today. “I always wanted to represent everything I could see.” Perhaps this kind
of intense experience was crucial to rewire the brain so it could cash in the
extra signals her eyes were receiving.
To
find out, Jameson teamed up with Alissa Winkler at the University of Nevada,
Reno, to compare Antico’s vision to a range of other participants, including
another tetrachromat who was not an artist, and also an artist who had regular
vision.
The
experiment tested the participants’ sensitivity to different levels of "luminance! at certain
wavelengths of light; put simply, with Antico’s eye’s extra cone, she should be
picking up more light, meaning that she could see very subtle differences in
the brightness of certain shades. Sure enough, Antico proved to be more
sensitive than the average person, particularly when looking at reddish tones –
a finding that perfectly matched the predictions from her genetic test.
As
Jameson had suspected, Antico also performed much better than the other
potential tetrachromat who was not an artist – supporting the idea that her
colour training had been crucial for the development of her abilities.
Using
these results, Jameson then reconstructed some photos to give us a better idea
of the way the world may look to Antico. Although it would be impossible to
recreate the exact picture she sees, the photos highlight which areas would be
most sensitive to Antico; in the scene above, for instance, the highlighted
patches show the areas most affected by her tetrachromacy. When I ask her what
the scene would look like in her eyes, she says the hillsides are orangey pink,
while there tends to be a lot of violet in the deadwood. Grass, she says, is iridescent, and the
bushes are “bright orange yellow olive green”.
“Now
I have a whole new appreciation of what everybody else is not seeing,” she
says. “It’s very shocking to me. Even when I found out I had tetrachromacy, I
didn’t understand the extent
of the differences in what I’m seeing and what regular folks are seeing.”
Jameson
has now started to study other tetrachromat artists (including Antico’s sister)
– so the hope is that she will be able to study how their ability is reflected
in their artistic style. So far, it looks like Antico's paintings show the same
kinds of details that might be predicted by Jameson and Winkler's simulations.
Antico,
for one, hopes to use Jameson’s simulations as a guide in her art classes; by
encouraging people to focus on the areas that are most vibrant for her, she hopes they may be able
to train their eyes to be more sensitive.
She
already thinks she’s seen some results. “Just yesterday, I was out walking with
my students, and one of them said ‘look at the violet in that bush – I would
have never seen that without you’,” she says.
astonishingly (Adj.)
very surprising:
pebble (n.)
a small smooth round stone, especially one found on a beach or in a river:
kaleidoscope (n.)
a toy in the shape of a tube, that you look through to seedifferent patterns of light made by pieces of coloured glassand mirrors
punnet (n.)
a small square or rectangular box in which particular typesof fruit are sold:
ripest (adj.)
(of fruit or crops) completely developed and ready to be collected or eaten:
commence (v.) to begin something
*เหมือนภาษาสเปนไปอี
striking (Adj.)
very unusual or easily noticed, and therefore attracting a lot of attention:
insights (n.)
(the ability to have) a clear, deep, and sometimes suddenunderstanding of a complicated problem or situation:
prevalence (n.)
the fact of something
existing or happening often :
descent (n.)
the state or fact of being related to a particular person or group of people who lived in the past:
(ARRIVAL)
an occasion when a group of people arrive somewhere, usually suddenly or unexpectedly:
a change in someone's behaviour, or in a situation, from good to bad:
vivid (Adj.)
Vivid descriptions, memories, etc. produce very clear, powerful, and detailed images in the mind:
manic (Adj.)
very excited or anxious (= worried and nervous) in a way that causes you to be very physically active:
iridescent (adj.)
showing many bright colours that change with movement:
extent (n.)
the extent to which
the degree to which something happens or is likely to happen:
to the extent of
so strongly that:
to the extent that
to a particular degree or stage, often causing particularresults:
.to the same extent
to the same degree as; as much as:
to some extent
partly:
to such an extent
so much:
to what extent?
how much:
vibrant (adj.)
energetic, exciting, and full of enthusiasm:
Vibrant colour or light is bright and strong:
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