Every Tuesday, AiF Health explains what signs may indicate that it’s time for you to see a doctor. This week we talk about what color blindness is and what can cause you to lose your color sense.
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| People suffering from color perception disorders owe their nickname to the English scientist John Dalton. An outstanding physicist and chemist of the 18th century, who himself could not distinguish the color red, first described this mysterious anomaly back in 1794. The extreme degree of color vision impairment is considered to be monochromatic vision, or color blindness, when a person cannot distinguish any colors at all. For him the world is black and white. True, such a pathology is extremely rare. Among all colorblind people, only one percent are absolute “monochromatics”. Many more people have difficulty distinguishing only some colors (usually red and green) or suffer from color weakness (a partial impairment of color perception when poor lighting, at a long distance or in fog). |
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One of the most common theories explains this phenomenon simply: it’s all about the absence or quantitative decrease in the retina of the eye nerve cells- cones, which are responsible for the perception of colors. It is believed that there are only three types of cones in our retina, which react differently to the perception of three basic colors: red, green and blue. The failure of at least one of them means that you are colorblind.
The overwhelming number of victims are representatives of the stronger sex. Green with red and blue with black.
People are both born and become color blind. At the same time congenital disorder color perception is transmitted mainly through the female line. You can also lose color perception (including temporarily) after a traumatic brain injury, severe general and visual fatigue, or severe flu, stroke or heart attack.
Fortunately, poor color discrimination does not affect visual acuity in any way. A person can live to an old age and not even realize that he has any problems.
It’s another matter if a colorblind person goes into chemist or electronics engineering, where mixing up the color of wires or reagents is life-threatening. The loss of color perception is also fatal for the artist. One of the most striking examples of this is the tragedy that happened to the famous artist Savrasov, the author of the famous painting “The Rooks Have Arrived.” Having had a serious illness infectious disease, the great master of landscape at the end of his life ceased to distinguish colors and painted his last creations “from memory.”
Vrubel was also color blind. Scientists came to this conclusion after analyzing the composition of his paintings, painted mainly in pearl-gray tones. The great artist suffered from red and red blindness green colors.
But drivers suffered the most from color confusion. At one time we believed that being colorblind and driving a car was prohibited. The visual defect was identified (and is still being identified) using special polychromatic tables compiled on the principle of color camouflage. Thanks to this research, dozens, hundreds of motorists received a “yellow” ticket.
Then the draconian rules were revised: . There are no longer restrictions on driving a car for people who are color blind. The only exception is if the person who wants to drive the wheel suffers from complete color blindness and if his work involves the constant transportation of people and valuable cargo.
Unfortunately, it is impossible to stop being colorblind. There are no tangible methods for treating color vision disorders. Some attempts in this direction, however, are being made. People suffering from color vision disorders are “prescribed” special glasses with complex color coating. Doctors are skeptical about such experiments: wearing “therapeutic” glasses leads to decreased vision, and therefore this method is not widespread.
Last Tuesday AiF Health told about what mastopathy is, why it occurs in the body hormonal imbalance and how to lower the level of “bad” estrogen >>
People are confident that their eyes can see all the colors of the world around them. But this is a big misconception! The ability to perceive colors varies greatly among both animals and humans. Even the most familiar objects can appear to have unprecedented colors in the eyes of other living organisms. We have collected scientific facts about color vision that you probably didn’t know.
Color is just a fantasy of our brain
From a physical point of view, color does not exist. Color vision is nothing more than the ability to distinguish between wave spectra of light. Everything else is the fantasy of our brain and the peculiarities of psychological perception. The eye perceives color, and a process begins in the brain that responds in the nervous system. Human visual receptors are sensitive to red, green and blue hues. If the perception of one of the three main spectra in the retina is weakened, then a person will not be able to distinguish some colors. There are people who, for example, cannot distinguish red from green.
The sun is a completely black body
Human vision distinguishes not only the wave spectrum of light, but also its temperature. The lighter the object, the warmer its emission spectrum. When studying the Sun, scientists found that it is an absolutely black cosmic object, although it appears almost white to us. This phenomenon is explained by the fact that our star absorbs all surrounding light rays and does not reflect anything from its surface.
Compared to birds, humans are colorblind
Sun, sky and everything the world around us a person is perceived by other living beings in a completely different way. The vision of cats and dogs is limited to only two color spectrums - red and blue. Sea life look at the world in red tones. Birds see red-green and ultraviolet-greenish-red shades, which human brain I can't even imagine.
Men and women see the world in different colors
Human color perception varies greatly, even within its own species. Thus, men and women seriously disagree in their views on the world. And this is not a figure of speech at all. According to research, representatives of the two sexes perceive the same colors differently. Men are more accurate in details - they detect them more easily when the object is moving. Women are much better at distinguishing shades. According to experts, this property helped our ancestors become good hunters and gatherers.
As we age, the world around us turns yellow
The visible color spectrum of humans is not only inferior to many animals, but also decreases with age. Over the years, color perception is impaired - the world around us turns yellow. This occurs due to changes in the optical properties of the sclera of the eye, which begins to perceive worse blue. This phenomenon is easy to notice if you look at the paintings of artists painted at a young and old age. The former will be filled with light tones, and the latter will be filled with shades of yellow and brown.
A person has the ability to see the world around him in all its diversity of colors and shades. He can admire the sunset, emerald greenery, bottomless blue sky and other beauties of nature. About the perception of color and its effect on the psyche and physical condition person we'll talk in this article.
Color is the subjective perception by the human brain of visible light, the differences in its spectral structure perceived by the eye. Humans have a better ability to distinguish colors than other mammals.
Light affects photosensitive receptors retina, and they then produce a signal transmitted to the brain. It turns out that the perception of color is formed in a complex way in the chain: the eye ( neural networks retina and exteroceptors) - visual images of the brain.
Thus, color is an interpretation of the surrounding world in the human mind, arising as a result of processing signals coming from the light-sensitive cells of the eye - cones and rods. In this case, the former are responsible for the perception of color, and the latter are responsible for the acuity of twilight vision.
The eye reacts to three primary tones: blue, green and red. And the brain perceives colors as a combination of these three primary colors. If the retina loses the ability to distinguish any color, then the person also loses it. For example, there are people who are unable to distinguish from red. 7% of men and 0.5% of women have such features. It is extremely rare that people do not see colors around them at all, which means that the receptor cells in their retina do not function. Some suffer from weakness twilight vision- this means that they have weakly sensitive rods. Such problems arise from various reasons: due to vitamin A deficiency or hereditary factors. However, a person can adapt to “color disorders”, so without special examination they are almost impossible to detect. People with normal vision are able to distinguish up to a thousand shades. A person's perception of color changes depending on the conditions of the surrounding world. The same tone looks different under candlelight or sunlight. But human vision quickly adapts to these changes and identifies the familiar color.
Exploring nature, man constantly discovered new principles of the structure of the world - symmetry, rhythm, contrast, proportions. He was guided by these impressions, transforming environment by creating your own unique world. Subsequently, the objects of reality gave rise to stable images in the human mind, accompanied by clear emotions. The individual’s perception of shape, size, color is associated with symbolic associative meanings geometric shapes and lines. For example, in the absence of divisions, the vertical is perceived by a person as something infinite, incommensurable, upward, light. A thickening at the bottom or a horizontal base makes it more stable in the eyes of the individual. But the diagonal symbolizes movement and dynamics. It turns out that a composition based on clear verticals and horizontals tends toward solemnity, staticity, and stability, while an image based on diagonals tends toward variability, instability, and movement.
It is a generally accepted fact that the perception of color is accompanied by a strong emotional impact. This problem was studied in detail by painters. V. V. Kandinsky noted that color affects a person in two ways. First the individual experiences physical impact, when the eye is either fascinated by color or irritated by it. This impression is fleeting when it comes to familiar objects. However, in an unusual context (an artist’s painting, for example), color can evoke a strong emotional experience. In this case, we can talk about the second type of influence of color on an individual.
Numerous experiments by psychologists and physiologists confirm the ability of color to influence a person’s physical condition. Dr. Podolsky described human visual perception of color as follows.
The influence of color on perception can be classified in different ways. There is a theory according to which all tones can be divided into stimulating (warm), disintegrating (cold), pastel, static, dull, warm dark and cold dark.
Stimulating (warm) colors promote arousal and act as irritants:
Disintegrating (cold) tones dampen excitement:
Mute the impact of pure colors:
Static colors can balance and distract from exciting colors:
Deep tones promote concentration (black); do not cause excitement (gray); extinguish irritation (white).
Warm dark colors(brown) cause lethargy, inertia:
Dark, cool tones suppress and isolate irritation.
The perception of color largely depends on the personal characteristics of a person. This fact was proven in his works on the individual perception of color compositions by the German psychologist M. Luscher. According to his theory, being in various emotional and mental state an individual can react differently to the same color. Moreover, the characteristics of color perception depend on the degree of personality development. But even with weak mental sensitivity, the colors of the surrounding reality are perceived ambiguously. Warm and light colors attract the eye more than dark ones. And at the same time, clear but poisonous colors cause anxiety, and a person’s vision involuntarily looks for cold green or blue tint to rest.
In an advertising message, the choice of color cannot depend only on the taste of the designer. After all, bright colors can both attract the attention of a potential client and make it difficult to obtain the necessary information. Therefore, the perception of an individual’s shape and color must be taken into account when creating advertising. Solutions can be the most unexpected: for example, against a motley background of bright pictures, a person’s involuntary attention is more likely to be attracted by a strict black and white ad rather than a colorful inscription.
Children's perception of color develops gradually. At first, they only recognize warm colors: red, orange and yellow. Then the development of mental reactions leads to the fact that the child begins to perceive blue, violet, indigo and green. And only with age does the baby become available to all the variety of color tones and shades. At three years old, children, as a rule, name two or three colors, and recognize about five. Moreover, some children have difficulty distinguishing basic tones even at the age of four. They poorly differentiate colors, have difficulty remembering their names, replace intermediate shades of the spectrum with the main ones, and so on. In order for a child to learn to adequately perceive the world around him, he needs to be taught to correctly distinguish colors.
Color perception should be taught from a very early age. The baby is naturally very inquisitive and needs a variety of information, but it must be introduced gradually so as not to irritate the child’s sensitive psyche. IN early age Children usually associate color with the image of an object. For example, green is a Christmas tree, yellow is a chicken, blue is the sky, and so on. The teacher needs to take advantage of this moment and develop color perception using natural forms.
Color, unlike size and shape, can only be seen. Therefore, when determining tone, a large role is played by comparison by superposition. If two colors are placed side by side, every child will understand whether they are the same or different. At the same time, he does not yet need to know the name of the color; it is enough to be able to complete tasks like “Plant each butterfly on a flower of the same color.” After the child learns to visually distinguish and compare colors, it makes sense to begin choosing according to the pattern, that is, to actually develop color perception. To do this, you can use the book by G. S. Shvaiko entitled “Games and game exercises for speech development.” Getting to know the colors of the world around us helps children feel reality more subtly and more fully, develops thinking and observation skills, and enriches speech.
One British resident, Neil Harbisson, conducted an interesting experiment on himself. Since childhood, he could not distinguish colors. Doctors found he had a rare vision defect - achromatopsia. The guy saw the surrounding reality as if in a black and white movie and considered himself a socially cut-off person. One day, Neil agreed to an experiment and allowed a special cybernetic instrument to be implanted into his head, which allows him to see the world in all its colorful diversity. It turns out that the eye's perception of color is not at all necessary. A chip and antenna with a sensor were implanted in the back of Neil's head, which picks up vibration and converts it into sound. In this case, each note corresponds to a specific color: F - red, A - green, C - blue, and so on. Now for Harbisson, a visit to the supermarket is akin to visiting a nightclub, and an art gallery reminds him of a trip to the Philharmonic. Technology gave Neil a sensation never before seen in nature: visual sound. A man makes interesting experiments with his new feeling, for example, he comes close to different people, studies their faces and composes music for their portraits.
We can talk endlessly about color perception. An experiment with Neil Harbisson, for example, suggests that the human psyche is very plastic and can adapt to the most unusual conditions. In addition, it is obvious that people have a desire for beauty, expressed in the internal need to see the world in color, and not monochrome. Vision is a unique and fragile instrument, the study of which will take a lot of time. It will be useful for everyone to learn as much as possible about it.
But a person’s perception of color is connected to his psyche.
The eyes receive some visual information (but do not "see" in literally words), it is transmitted to the brain, which processes it, and only after that we are able to distinguish objects.
Although we “see” with our brain and distinguish colors with it, the eyes perform a very important and irreplaceable function. They perceive seven colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. Some retinal receptors are irritated by twilight light, others - only by bright light, and color vision is associated with them.
This is how the Yang-Helmholtz theory of color vision explains it. The eye contains three types of nerve cells that react respectively to red, green, blue-violet colors.
Thus, if all three types of nerve cells receive the same stimulation, we see white. If it hits mostly green light, the cells responsible for the green part of the spectrum are excited more than others, and we see green. When an object is yellow, "green" and "red" cells are stimulated.
The human eye contains two categories of color-sensitive receptors: the first are responsible for night vision (help a person distinguish colors at dusk), the second are responsible for color vision. The retina of the human eye contains three types of cones that allow us to distinguish colors and shades. Having high sensitivity, they are responsible for what colors. In this case, the maximum sensitivity occurs in the blue, green and red regions of the spectrum. That is why a person recognizes these colors best. It should be noted that the range of spectral sensitivity of all three cones overlaps, so when exposed to very strong light radiation, the human eye perceives it as a blinding white color. Thanks to light-sensitive receptors and cones, a person is able to distinguish not only 7 colors of the rainbow, but a much larger number of colors and their shades.The given figures may vary depending on the degree of training of a person, his physiological state, as well as lighting conditions. For example, under certain conditions a person can distinguish about 500 shades of gray.
