An unknown number of women may perceive millions of colors invisible to the rest of us.
For more than two decades, Newcastle University neuroscientist Gabriele Jordan and her colleagues, have been searching for people endowed with this super-vision.
Most humans are trichromats, meaning that we have three types of cone cells in our eyes.
A doctor in England has four cone cell types. That means she can see an amazing 99 million more colors than the rest of us.
Jordan told Discover:
“We now know tetrachromacy exists. But we don’t know what allows someone to become functionally tetrachromatic, when most four-coned women aren’t.”
Now is estimated that around 12 percent of the female population, should be tetrachromats.
Colour Vision. My main research background is in human psychophysics and one of my long-term interests concerns the inter-individual variabilities seen in X-linked (red/green)colour vision of both colour-normal and colour-deficient observers. Recent discoveries include the existence of tetrachromatic females and the finding that so-called colour-deficient observers can discriminate hues that are invisible to colour-normal observers.
via Discover
How does one find out if one is tetra chromatic? My husband is always arguing with me about what color something is, but that’s hardly proof.