This eye caught my attention. There is a tiny group of people who can see ‘invisible’ colors that no-one else can perceive. How do they do it? So this art student went to the park for her lesson, she would often question them about the many shades she saw flashing before her eyes. “I’d say, ‘Look at the light on the water, can you see the pink shimmering across that rock? Can you see the red on the edge of that leaf there?’” The students would all nod in agreement. It was only years later that she realized they were just too polite to tell the truth: the colors she saw so vividly were invisible to them. Today, she knows that this is a symptom of a condition known as “Tetrachromacy”. Thanks to a variation in a gene that influences the development of their retinas, people like Antico can see colors invisible to most of us. Consider a pebble pathway. What appears dull grey to you or me shines like a jeweler’s display to Antico. “The little stones jump out at me with oranges, yellows, greens, blues and pinks,” she says. “I’m kind of shocked when I realized what other people aren’t seeing. Tetrachromats are rare enough, but Antico is particularly remarkable, since, as an artist, she is able to give us a rare view into that world. “Her artwork might tap into a structure that all of us can appreciate,” says Kimberly Jameson at the University of California, Irvine, who has studied Antico extensively. It’s even possible that she might suggest ways for more people to see the same way... read more
This was a picture, painted by Concetta Antico. She painted this in comparison to the original scene to give a hint of the extra shades she sees. It was when looking at one of those paintings one day that a customer suggested that Antico contact some researchers who work on Tetrachromacy. The genetics test came back positive, and she began collaborating with Jameson on a series of experiments.
Post if the right side is normal to you or the left. Maybe we can find out if any of us are positive for this:
" Tetrachromacy " which is the condition of possessing four independent channels for conveying color information, or possessing four different types of cone cells in the eye.