Scientists Discover a Woman Whose Eyes Have a Whole New Type of Colour Receptor – She Can See What We Can’t...

Originally shared by Before It's News

Scientists Discover a Woman Whose Eyes Have a Whole New Type of Colour Receptor – She Can See What We Can’t http://rgn.bz/8W2r

by Alexa Erickson, Collective Evolution

Do you see green the same way that I see green? Every now and then, we find ourselves wondering such questions, as we have all come to know and agree on the use of generic colour names like blue, yellow, green, and so on to distinguish and analyze life around us. Surely, we are all unique in the way we view colours to a degree, but at the end of the day, green is green, and so we leave it at that. But not everyone is quite like this.

After searching for more than 25 years, neuroscientists in the UK have come across a woman who has an extra type of cone cell — the receptor cells that detect colour — in her eyes. This means she can see a whopping 99 million more colours than the rest of us, and belongs to a very small group of people with super-vision called “tetrachromats.”

The majority of humans, referred to as “trichromats,” have three types of cone cells in their eyes, with each one thought to be able to distinguish around 100 shades. Together, our three cone cells can distinguish roughly 1 million different colours. Those who are colour blind, however, only have two functioning types of cone cells.

And then there’s the doctor in northern England who researchers found two years ago. Identified as cDa29, she has four cone cell types, which means she may be able to distinguish up to 100 million colours that many of us could only fantasize about.

So how do you get a fourth type of cone cell? The idea was first proposed in 1948, when Dutch scientist HL de Vries discovered something interesting about the eyes of colour blind people. He noticed that colour blind men only possessed two normal cone cells and one mutant cone that’s less sensitive to either green or red light, while the mothers and daughters of said men possessed one mutant cone and three normal cones. This means they had four types of cone cells, one of which wasn’t working like the rest.

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