
Can These Glasses Help the Colorblind? We Put EnChroma to the Test - IgorPartola
http://gizmodo.com/can-these-glasses-help-the-colorblind-we-put-en-chroma-1739433668
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xacaxulu
Years ago I applied (and was accepted) to a special assignment in the US
Marines that required perfect vision including color vision. I took a few
weeks leave, went to Canada (so there'd be no US medical records) and got
lasik and ChromaGen contact lenses. Passed all the vision tests. For me this
was the only thing that stood between me and a very cool assignment.

Edit: I eventually passed the Ishihara test (colored dots) where I previously
failed it.

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tritium
My God. That video of the monkey compulsively pecking away at that touch
screen for rewards...

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEeU8CV_3Mo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MEeU8CV_3Mo)

That video hits so much closer to home than it should. I see a lot more of
myself in that monkey than is comfortable.

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bonobo
> _But there’s still the concern that wearing a colored filter while taking
> the D15 test will alter the relative brightness of the chips, providing a
> context cue that can help subjects score higher._

I'm confused about this statement: isn't the whole point of these glasses to
provide such clues? I may be more knowledgeable about the subject than the
average Joe (I like reading about it), or I may be completely wrong (I'm no
pro), but it's obvious to me that real color vision is indeed impossible
without gene therapy -- you can't show to the brain what the eyes can't
detect, at least not _through_ the eyes. Do they claim it provides real full
color vision? I don't even think this is testable, for that matter (qualia
etc).

~~~
gizmo686
Our eyes essentially convert incoming light into three scalar values (one for
each of our three cones, S, M, and L). The specific color blindness that this
article is talking about is not really color blindness, but rather two of
these cones overlapping more than usual. In theory, by filtering out the
wavelengths of light in these overlapping regions, you can improve the wearers
ability to perceive differences in color. Of course, this also affects
percieved brightness, and their is no good way of knowing if the user is
telling the difference based on the fact that the signal is being picked up by
different cones, or the fact that it is being picked up as a different
brightness.

~~~
bonobo
I thought they were talking about dichromatism, I missed the part where they
say it fixes anomalous trochromatism only. It makes sense now, thanks.

~~~
jacobolus
Deuteranomaly/protanomaly are between them something like 2.5 times as common
as deuteranopia/protanopia (other color vision deficiencies besides those four
are very rare). So this should still be very helpful to most “colorblind”
people.

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pmoriarty
I'm looking forward to the day that people with "normal" vision are able to
see currently invisible colors.

It doesn't look like this technology would allow that, but perhaps gene
therapy or some other technology might.

We might even naturally evolve that capability, and there has been some
evidence that already there are some people who have that mutation.

There was a RadioLab episode about that,[1] which included discussion of the
possibility that in Homer's time humans did not have the ability to see blue.

[1] - [http://www.radiolab.org/2012/may/21/sky-isnt-
blue/](http://www.radiolab.org/2012/may/21/sky-isnt-blue/)

~~~
mikekchar
I didn't listen to the episode, but I'm a little sceptical. Traditionally, in
Japanese there was no word for _green_ , only blue (aoi in Japanese). The
forest is blue, the ocean is blue, the sky is blue, etc. Green (midori) was
only added to the language in recent times. Even now the green light on a
traffic light is called "aoi" (blue) in Japanese.

It's not that Japanese people are not able to distinguish between green and
blue, it's that linguistically the colours are broken down differently. If you
have a discussion about the colours of the forest, for instance, even now many
people will insist that the deep, dark green of pine needles is "aoi" (blue)
and that midori (green) is more on the yellow end of green (for example new
shoots).

So you might be tempted to think that maybe it is the same -- they couldn't
see blue and therefore green and blue had the same name. However, the kanji
for geen, 緑, has existed for thousands of years and is used in many Japanese
words. For example, 緑茶 means "green tea" (as opposed to oolong tea, for
instance). So even though the concept of green existed and there was a
character for writing it, if you were to ask people 100 years ago (or just ask
older people now) what colour "green tea" is, they would say "blue".

So I think it is entirely possible that Homer simply didn't use the word
"blue" because he categorized colour differently. It's not necessarily the
case that he couldn't see it. Well... I guess Homer was blind.... but you get
my point ;-)

~~~
abrowne
More about "grue" in other languages:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_of_blue_and_green_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distinction_of_blue_and_green_in_various_languages)

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jessriedel
Interesting to note that the 2-parameter space of colors we see (basically, 3
RGB minus one parameter for overall brightness) is completely a consequence of
humans only having 3 cones. Since you can basically have an arbitrary spectrum
(i.e., arbitrary strength at each frequency), the "fundamental" space of
physical colors is vastly larger.

~~~
nikatwork
Some humans have 4 cones:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Human_tetrachrom...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrachromacy#Human_tetrachromats)

~~~
escherplex
Interesting subject matter. A tech article which summarizes current research
on retinal tetrachromat genotypes can be found here:

URL:
[http://glimpsejournal.com/index.php/Glimpse/pages/view/2.3-K...](http://glimpsejournal.com/index.php/Glimpse/pages/view/2.3-KAJ)

Notice how standard test results suggest to one research group that the color
processing among tetrachromats is defective while to another the same results
suggest such subjects exhibit higher sensitivity and simply see things
differently.

Also curious, toward the bottom of the article is the wide evenly spaced
European Starling tetrachromat probability peaks chart with sensitivities well
above 300 nm. Hypothetically, it would be interesting to feed output from a
Starling retina into an interface with the sophisticated human occipatal lobe
and learn what qualial configurations are synthesized in the conscious
workspace. Maybe new color qualia would show up.

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samstave
[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3qkr7e/iama_colorblin...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/3qkr7e/iama_colorblind_guy_who_has_been_using_enchroma/)

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BuckRogers
I'm colorblind[0] and already knew about the professors in Washington state
doing gene therapy on this. I'm eager to join in the human trials when they
begin, but my understanding from friends who are scientists that the legal
hurdles of such a thing is enormous. My mother found out when as a child I
said "wow the grass sure is red today". I've never really seen green grass
other than in a painting. Grass varies of course, but it's closer to a reddish
for sure though on average. I can't really tell when it's brown and dying very
easily either. It's pretty difficult to explain to someone that you "don't
know" what color something is really.

I'm not interested in Enchroma though, you can't add lost information. I'm
sure it helps differentiate between shades. Just as you can't upscale a
640x480 image to 4K without adding the missing information. I'd like to try
them on to test, but without that I can't send these people ~$400 for
something that seems dubious to begin with.

I did just learn this from the Enchroma page- "something as ordinary as peanut
butter, which should look brown, appears to be green for someone with color
blindness!" I had no idea peanut butter was brown. I remember seeing a Sesame
Street episode as a kid in the mid 80s where they showed a peanut butter
factory, noting the color as a child. I always thought it was greenish/tan.

I would love to see the world how it is to everyone else before I die at
least.

[0][http://enchroma.com/test/result/strong-
deutan/?completed=1&r...](http://enchroma.com/test/result/strong-
deutan/?completed=1&result=strong+deutan&pts=1.32&dts=1.32&tts=0.225)

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lbenes
If you enjoyed this article, I recommend the PBS series, The Brain with David
Eagleman. You can watch all the episodes on their Roku channel or their
website[1]. The episode "What is Reality?" covers how everyone's brain creates
a unique internal model of reality.

[1] [http://video.pbs.org/program/brain-david-
eagleman/](http://video.pbs.org/program/brain-david-eagleman/)

