Can You Pass the Online Color Vision Test?

[collinsmark]

Here's a link to a paper that gives a more quantitative approach on RGB monitors' relative intensities of color rendering.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CB8QFjAA&url=http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2009/tenerife/CSECS/CSECS-15.pdf&ei=iUFrVceJJcu2oQTTsoD4DA&usg=AFQjCNFac3dN0tdylrOgXBpzcTfc9QMXgQ&sig2=9f7jyevPl-hsCKbbX9hnqA&bvm=bv.94455598,d.cGU&cad=rja

Figure 1 shows the relative sensitivity of the cones (receptors in the eyes of a typical trichromat).

Figures 3 and 4 show the relative intensities of a CRT monitor and an LCD monitor. Note that the red, green and blue color bandwidths are much narrower in the monitors (which are transmitting the light) than they are in the cones (which are receiving the light).

Edit: Here's an interesting quote from the paper. It's in reference to the CRT monitor, but the same idea applies to the LCD monitor, albeit different peaks:

"Such spikes are not
commonly found in nature, and consequently the
CRT emissions almost never match the spectral
power distribution found in the original scene. The
color match can only be arranged basing on the
eye’s inability to distinguish between different
spectral power distributions (metamerism) [4,7]."​

 

[DaveC426913]

"Combined dispaly" colours? I'm not sure what that means.

I'm saying the diagram is not depicting two narrow frequencies of light; it is depicting two colours (i.e. 0,191,193 and 0,193,191).

Perhaps we are talking past each other due to a misunderstanding of how an RGB monitor works.

No. I know how they work. Being in both software/.hardware as well as photography, I have a better thna average understanding.

Below is a more qualitative (not to scale) way of how an RGB monitor produces the colors RGB [0,193, 191] and [0, 191, 193]. Does it make sense now how this is not an adequate tool to use for a tetrachromacy test?

Perhaps this is a place where we can meet. As I said before, it is certainly not ideal to use RGB monitors for study, I was simply making the point that a tetrachromat could distinguish colours better than a typical person, even when looking at a monitor.View attachment 84305

Notice that after combining (neglecting any slight overlap, which I think is a valid approach, given the narrower, primary color bandwidths produced by the monitor), the individual peaks do not change frequency (reciprocal of wavelength), at least not significantly. They only change their relative intensities.[/QUOTE]
Correct. And a tetrachromat will be able to perceive them better.

I'm annoyed, I should have just done the diagram accurately, and damn the information overload.

 

[Algr]

I was simply making the point that a tetrachromat could distinguish colours better than a typical person, even when looking at a monitor.

I don't think you can say that at all, even if your interpretation of how monitors work is correct. What if the addition of the fourth color introduces noise in the other three? Or the brain might have a fixed amount of attention to such details - more color channels means less detail in each channel. (Think of audio, where we have hundreds of "channels", but only two "pixels".) Or natural variation in color sensitivity might overwhelm any benefit a 4th channel might provide.

 

[DaveC426913]

What if the addition of the fourth color introduces noise in the other three?

There is no fourth colour.

Or the brain might have a fixed amount of attention to such details - more color channels means less detail in each channel.

No. There is no evidence that a tetrachromat has more receptors, simply that some of the green ones have a mutation that results in them having a peak stimulation frequency a little lower than others.

And they are not "channels". We all have zilliions of cones. If they are stimulated, a signal is sent to the brain. What stimulates them is outside the brain's purview. (If I manually stimulated your red cones with a tiny electric pulse, you would see red. Your brain does not know what stimulated the cones.)

Furthermore, you're talking as if we have to speculate what they might experience. We don't. There are tetrachromats, and their ability to distinguish colours better than typicals has been studied. The only question here is whether the narrowband frequencies of RGB monitors has a confounding effect.

 

[DaveC426913]

Below is a more qualitative (not to scale) way of how an RGB monitor produces the colors RGB [0,193, 191] and [0, 191, 193]. Notice that after combining (neglecting any slight overlap, which I think is a valid approach, given the narrower, primary color bandwidths produced by the monitor), the individual peaks do not change frequency (reciprocal of wavelength), at least not significantly. They only change their relative intensities.

I have been working on a 2nd diagram, using your example as a basis, if that one makes you happier. It demonstrates the same principle. A tetrachromat's combo of receptors will show a more pronounced difference between 0,193,191 and 0,191,193 than a typical person's receptors will.

I just have a limited amount of time in which to create these graphs.

 

[Andy Resnick]

And what's your third favorite?

Good question... 119.2, I think.

 

[Algr]

1) There is no fourth colour.
2) having a peak stimulation frequency a little lower than others.

As far as I can see, these two statements directly contradict each other.

 

[DaveC426913]

As far as I can see, these two statements directly contradict each other.

That's because you ambiguously applied the word: "colour".

You said there's "a fourth colour". There isn't. Colour is a property of a brain. A single colour can be comprised of a multitude of frequencies. But they are all part of the same spectrum we are used to, so no extra colours.

There is the visible spectrum, all of which we see, through stimulation of our cones that peak in their sensitivity at certain frequencies of light. Tetrachromats merely have a bunch of cones whose peak is more green-yellow than the usual green (ie. lower frequency).

 

[collinsmark]

That's because you ambiguously applied the word: "colour".

You said there's "a fourth colour". There isn't. Colour is a property of a brain.

For a typical human, being a trichromat, there are three primary colors, red green and blue. That's because in trichromats (typical humans) there are only three types of color cones with associated optic nerve connections and brain processing. The brain is able to process these three colors and combinations of them, into what we perceive as other colors (cyan, yellow and magenta are examples of combinations of these three primary colors).

Due to a limitation called metamerism, typical humans cannot distinguish between a single, narrow wavelength in between these primary color wavelengths, and a combination of two primary color wavelengths.

For example, there is significant overlap in the sensitivity of the green and red cones. Filtered light photons with a narrow wavelength around 570-580 nm have an approximately equal chance of exciting the green cones as they do the red cones. This is perceived as yellow. But typical humans can be fooled into perceiving the same color by viewing red light combined with green light.

For tetracrhomats there is a fourth primary color. For them, other colors are linear combinations of these four primary colors. For them, the difference might not be as pronounced as the difference between a trichromat and a colorblind person, but there is a difference.

The human tetrachromat can perceive an actual rainbow differently than a rainbow displayed on a standard computer monitor. Particularly, the difference is in the yellowish part of the spectrum. In a real rainbow, they perceive a color that is not possible to reproduce by a simple combination of red, green and blue light.

Tetrachomats also have a metamerism limitation, but it involves indistinguishable colors involving combinations of their four primary colors, not three as it is with most people.

A single colour can be comprised of a multitude of frequencies.

Yes, due to a limitation (some might call it a weakness) of metamerism.

But they are all part of the same spectrum we are used to, so no extra colours.

Well, there are indeed extra colors for a tetrachomat compared to a trichromat.

Although it might not be quite as pronounced, it's the same idea as saying a trichromatic human can see extra colors compared to a colorblind person.

There is the visible spectrum, all of which we see, through stimulation of our cones that peak in their sensitivity at certain frequencies of light. Tetrachromats merely have a bunch of cones whose peak is more green-yellow than the usual green (ie. lower frequency).

And the tetrachomats perceive that color distinctly -- differently than a trichomat who could be fooled into thinking that a combination of red and green light is that same color.

 

[waternohitter]

I scored 27, not bad

 

[Algr]

If I manually stimulated your red cones with a tiny electric pulse, you would see red. Your brain does not know what stimulated the cones.)

What color would a tetrachromat see if you stimulated her X and B cones, but not her R or G cones?

 

[DaveC426913]

What color would a tetrachromat see if you stimulated her X and B cones, but not her R or G cones?

Teal.
Almost, but not quite the same colour as they would see if we stimulated their G and B cones.

 

[Algr]

Unless we get an actual tetrachromat to post here it ought to be impossible to answer that question. My suspicion is that she would see an "impossible" color that was unlike anything she had ever seen before.

I wonder how you are evaluating the overlap between the green and X cones.

Imagine you were building a 3-chip video camera. You have red, green, and blue filters to place in front of each sensor chip to create color. But you discover that your filters are rather pale: each one let's in 100% of the desired frequency range, but 50% of the other wavelengths. You might think that this would result in a poor camera that can only produce pastels. Actually, once you calibrate your camera correctly, you'll find that it can produce excellent color - the full range of trichromatic vision. Compared to a camera with pure filters, your color channels would be noisier, but your luminance channel would be cleaner - possibly a desirable tradeoff. (I'm simplifying how cameras work here, let's not get off topic.)

For a tetrachromat, the overlap of green and X cones might affect the subtlety of the X channel, but would make no difference in the identity of that channel at all. She would simply learn as a baby that the X and G cones can only be so different and would regard the maximum difference as totally unlike colors.

Edit: I forgot to close the connection: With the pale filter camera there are certain RGB values that can't occur. 255,128,128 would be maximum red, and would be adjusted to 255,0,0 on the monitor. If a pixel yielded 255 despite the corresponding pixels being below 128, it would produce an "impossible" color such as in the first paragraph. A camera could recognize this as a broken pixel and reject the data. Until we can actually perform this experiment, we don't know what would happen with a person.

 

[DaveC426913]

Unless we get an actual tetrachromat to post here it ought to be impossible to answer that question. My suspicion is that she would see an "impossible" color that was unlike anything she had ever seen before.

No!

There really is a tetrachromat who has described her experiences! It's not some magical unicorny colour. Essentially, she can simply tell when a teal skirt and teal blouse don't match when others think they do.

I will see if I can dig up the article.

 

[Algr]

No!

Yes!

 

[zoobyshoe]

No!

There really is a tetrachromat who has described her experiences! It's not some magical unicorny colour. Essentially, she can simply tell when a teal skirt and teal blouse don't match when others think they do.

I will see if I can dig up the article.

Dave, did you see the extravagant claims made in the link posted in the opening post?
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/02/what-like-see-a-hundred-million-colors.html

 

[Drakkith]

Got a 3 here.

 

[DaveC426913]

Dave, did you see the extravagant claims made in the link posted in the opening post?
http://nymag.com/scienceofus/2015/02/what-like-see-a-hundred-million-colors.html

No I didn't.

There was an article a few years ago that included some discussion with a tetrachromat, describing her experiences - straight from the horse's mouth.

 

[Algr]

What she says sounds more like synesthesia then tetrachromacy. When such a person says "I see green, purple, yellow, red" we have to be careful because we don't know what those words mean to her. One test would be to show her a single laser projecting patterns and textures on a wall. If she is still seeing all these "colors", then we have to reject her whole vocabulary and concentrate on test patterns.

 

[zoobyshoe]

There was an article a few years ago that included some discussion with a tetrachromat, describing her experiences - straight from the horse's mouth.

That's what that article is: an interview with a tetrachromat (alleged).

What she says sounds more like synesthesia then tetrachromacy.

I had the same reaction. She sounds like some weird sort of synesthete rather than someone who has one more color experience than everyone else.

 

[DaveC426913]

That's what that article is: an interview with a tetrachromat (alleged).

I had the same reaction. She sounds like some weird sort of synesthete rather than someone who has one more color experience than everyone else.

Then it's not the same articIe or the same woman.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Then it's not the same articIe or the same woman.

The linked article is an interview with Concetta Antico. She's also mentioned in the wiki article on Tetrachromacy as a proven tetrochromat. In fact, she seems to be the poster girl for the condition-there are many articles about her in various publications. So, rightly or wrongly, you guys have to deal with what she says about the condition.

 

[Algr]

It's particularly odd that she says she enjoys movies. With the fourth color unarticulated, she ought to find them odd and unrealistic, like we see two-strip color.

 

[zoobyshoe]

It's particularly odd that she says she enjoys movies. With the fourth color unarticulated, she ought to find them odd and unrealistic, like we see two-strip color.

I actually like the "after" version better. I dislike pale yellow green in plants. Also, the "after" version highlights the blue/orange complementary relationship. There was a whole movie filmed in that palette and it worked really well. (Can't remember the name of it, but it was about a bunch of National Guardsmen trapped in a southern swamp during the rainy season. The cinematography was, in fact, the best part of the movie.)
------------------------------------------
For my money the whole Concetta Antico thing sounds like an error or maybe even a hoax. She is, when all is said and done, hyping herself as "The World's First Tetrachromat Artist" :
http://concettaantico.com/

This doesn't sound like what you'd expect from the addition of a fourth color others don't have:

I see colors in other colors. For example, I’m looking at some light right now that’s peeking through the door in my house. Other people might just see white light, but I see orange and yellow and pink and green and some magenta and a little bit of blue. So white is not white; white is all varieties of white. You know when you look at a pantone and you see all the whites separated out? It’s like that for me, but they are more intense. I see all those whites in white but I resolve all these colors in the white, so it’s almost like a mosaic. They are all next to each other but connected. As I look at it, I can differentiate different colors. I could never say that’s just a white door, instead I see blue, white, yellow-blue, gray.

She seems to see perfectly normal colors, but in places others wouldn't see them. Rather than tetrachromacy, it's more suggestive of some kind of hyperactivity in the area of the brain where color qualia are added to experience. Provided she's reporting an authentic experience and not just spinning a tale to make her art unique in people's minds, then tetrachromacy as an explanation strikes me as barking up the wrong tree. Some kind of neurological anomaly seems more like it.

However, someone more conversant with how cones work might be able to explain her experience in terms of the 4th kind of cone. I don't know.

Her paintings are particularly exiting in terms of color, but I don't think she's doing anything that requires a novel mode of perception. The impressionists and expressionists did the same with, presumably, three normal color cones.

 

[collinsmark]

For my money the whole Concetta Antico thing sounds like an error or maybe even a hoax. She is, when all is said and done, hyping herself as "The World's First Tetrachromat Artist" :
http://concettaantico.com/

I agree in-so-far that we certainly can't rely on her own personal descriptions of colors as evidence of tetrachromacy.

Neglecting changes such as medical operations, injuries or aging (and maybe drugs), any particular person only has a single point of reference to how they see colors. So one's own personal description of colors doesn't get us anywhere. The interview goes on and on about her own descriptions of colors -- way to much in my opinion -- and that doesn't mean anything. Wasted words, if you ask me.

But scientific tests should be able do it. Perhaps paint swatches with two different, yet metemer pigments, both with equal texture and gloss and such -- pigments with different spectral properties, yet indistinguishable to most humans. The lighting needs to be controlled too. The ambient light fixtures must have proper spectral properties (perhaps direct sunlight might be a better option).

Maybe a better test is one that is more direct. Perhaps creating two color metemers with combinations different hot gasses, each gas bulb producing very narrow spectral lines. The test would then be looking at a matte, white surface reflecting the two different light combinations. Of course one of the light combinations would of course have peaks in between the standard RGB primary colors, and the other not so.

A simpler version might be like the gas bulb test, but instead simply using different combinations of narrowband light filters, filtering sunlight. (Such filters might be constructed for use in photography or astrophotography. [but probably not for color photography])

If she could reliably and repeatably distinguish the two pigments or two light combinations, when most other people cannot, that would be evidence of tetrachomacy.

[Edit: Or lasers! Anything involving lasers is cool. For example, use a yellow laser together with a micro-mirror device to produce an image. Then use red and green lasers together with the micro-mirror device to produce a metemer image (after adjusting the brightness, and red/green color balance).]

Concetta Antico was apparently tested with a sort of "minimum motion" test where different colors were flickered at a varied rate on a background with particular spectral properties (the minimum motion reference comes from how humans can perceive motion from still pictures displayed in quick succession, such as in a motion picture). I can only seem to find the preliminary results of the test (I wish I could find something which describes the test in more detail, but alas, my googling skills are sub-par as of late [Edit: found something. See next post]). Here's a link to the preliminary results (from her website): http://concettaantico.com/?smd_process_download=1&download_id=2054

 

[collinsmark]

Here's a link to the article in GLIMPSE journal that expands on the Concetta Antico study.

http://glimpsejournal.com/index.php/Glimpse/pages/view/Issue-12-Truth-Veridicality-of-Color

[For what it's worth, the peer review process used by GLIMPSE involves scholars from other disciplines in what they call "neighborly review" vs. the traditional "peer review" model.]

 

[Sirsh]

That was a pretty interesting way to test colour vision, I got 23 which isn't so bad!

 

[zoobyshoe]

Here's a link to the article in GLIMPSE journal that expands on the Concetta Antico study.

http://glimpsejournal.com/index.php/Glimpse/pages/view/Issue-12-Truth-Veridicality-of-Color]

OK, I skimmed it looking for some hard facts and the only one that seemed relevant was that she demonstrated heightened sensitivity to reds. (If you got something else out of that, let me know.) A heightened sensitivity to reds doesn't seem to explain her experience of seeing all kinds of colors where others see one, or few.

As I mentioned earlier, the colors in her paintings are very rich, but she's not doing anything Van Gogh et al weren't doing. Take this painting, for example:

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gogh/fields/gogh.cypress-star.jpg

Van Gogh didn't literally see the landscape this way, he translated what anyone would see into a kind of 'mosaic' made of distinct brush strokes. Solid fields are artificially parsed, as it were, into the different colors you see in the painting. It's as if he's doing pointillism, but with big brush strokes instead of little dots. In that sense, he "saw" colors where others didn't, but that's a manner of speaking, not a literal statement about his visual apparatus. The painting is the result of artistic distortion, exaggeration, alteration from the literal.

I can't get over my suspicion this artist may be unconsciously on purpose working at muddying the distinction between what she literally sees, and her artistic vision about how a field of color might be re-rendered for effect in a painting. What bothers me is that she seems all-too-aware of what a "normal" person sees. You don't find that in color blind people or synesthetes. They start out assuming everyone else sees the world as they do, and come to a shocking realization one day that they don't. The researchers, already convinced there might be such a thing as a human tetrachromat, seem willing to shoehorn her into that category by confirmation bias. Between the two of them, the researchers and the artist, I worry we're seeing the equivalent of a mentalist being pawned off as a true psychic.

 

[collinsmark]

OK, I skimmed it looking for some hard facts and the only one that seemed relevant was that she demonstrated heightened sensitivity to reds. (If you got something else out of that, let me know.) A heightened sensitivity to reds doesn't seem to explain her experience of seeing all kinds of colors where others see one, or few.

Although close to red, it's still a distinct wavelength from the red cone's peak sensitivity (although the sensitivity ranges of the two cone types have a whole lot of overlap).

Sure the 4th color cone type has a peak at only 1 color (same can be said about the other color cone types). Presumably, the extra colors that she sees are due to color combinations with the other cone types.

Consider a human with some hypothetical, particular type of complete deuteranopia, where he has no working green sensitive cones. To that person certain hues of what other people consider green, magenta and white (or more accurately some shade of gray) are all the same color (indistinguishable). He can distinguish red from blue, but all other colors in existence are perceived as just somewhere on the scale of red/blue combination.

"Green sensitive cones?" he may ask. "If I had those, they'd just help me see the grays a little better," he might answer to himself.

Now he magically gets his green sensitive cones (and associated nerves/brain functions) working. To his surprise he's able to see not only green, but all the color combinations that go with it such as yellow and cyan. He's now able to not only distinguish those particular hues of green from magenta, green from gray and magenta from gray (that were previously indistinguishable), but also cyan from purple (previously indistinguishable) and pink from yellow (previously indistinguishable).

So 1 extra color cone type corresponds to many more colors when including all the combinations.

I gather that whatever the tetrachromat sees is not as pronounced as my example above. But the idea that a 4th color cone type can lead many more perceived colors -- many more than just one extra color -- is a logical extrapolation, once one considers all the new combinations.

As I mentioned earlier, the colors in her paintings are very rich, but she's not doing anything Van Gogh et al weren't doing. Take this painting, for example:

http://www.ibiblio.org/wm/paint/auth/gogh/fields/gogh.cypress-star.jpg

Van Gogh didn't literally see the landscape this way, he translated what anyone would see into a kind of 'mosaic' made of distinct brush strokes. Solid fields are artificially parsed, as it were, into the different colors you see in the painting. It's as if he's doing pointillism, but with big brush strokes instead of little dots. In that sense, he "saw" colors where others didn't, but that's a manner of speaking, not a literal statement about his visual apparatus. The painting is the result of artistic distortion, exaggeration, alteration from the literal.

I can't get over my suspicion this artist may be unconsciously on purpose working at muddying the distinction between what she literally sees, and her artistic vision about how a field of color might be re-rendered for effect in a painting. What bothers me is that she seems all-too-aware of what a "normal" person sees. You don't find that in color blind people or synesthetes. They start out assuming everyone else sees the world as they do, and come to a shocking realization one day that they don't. The researchers, already convinced there might be such a thing as a human tetrachromat, seem willing to shoehorn her into that category by confirmation bias. Between the two of them, the researchers and the artist, I worry we're seeing the equivalent of a mentalist being pawned off as a true psychic.

Could be.

Far be it from me to claim how somebody else experiences color. 'Best I can do is ramble on about how some wavelength combinations are distinguishable. But going in one direction is much easier than going the other. Being a trichromat myself, I have no hope of comprehending how she truly and qualitatively experiences color (assuming that she is in fact an actual tretrachromat).

On the other hand, she might be aware of the limitations that I have. Looking at a scene depicted on a calibrated RGB computer monitor might give her some idea of how I see the world. To me, the picture on the monitor looks pretty much identical my perception of the real-world equivalent (the exact spot where the picture was taken [and let's assume the picture was taken with a high-end digital camera]). If she sees a noticeable difference between the real world and the image on the monitor, she now has a pretty good insight as to how I perceive the world: the image on the monitor (sort of). At least she's now aware of some of the limitations that I have about certain colors being indistinguishable. [Edit: btw, I have no idea if she does see a noticeable difference. If she doesn't, and the real-world scene has wavelengths corresponding to her 4th cone type, and the particular RGB monitor's color channels peak elsewhere and have narrow bandwidths, then, well, maybe she's not a true tetrachromat.]

I can use a similar idea to gain some sort of insight to how people with less than three functioning cone types might distinguish certain colors. I just need to adjust the red, green and blue channels on my monitor (or adjust the RGB channels of images in Photoshop). Is that the same as how a colorblind person would qualitatively experience the image? Probably not. But it's still useful insight.

 

[collinsmark]

Hmm. She's having a show tomorrow (Saturday) evening here in San Diego. Maybe we should show up and ask her about some of this.

http://concettaantico.com/2015/04/modern-muse-art-show/
Preview Concetta’s latest oil painting collection. A celebration of color inspired by contemporary themes.
Saturday, June 6, 6-9pm
1920 Fort Stockton Drive, Suite A San Diego, CA 92103​

(Hmm. I didn't RSVP though.)

 

[zoobyshoe]

Although close to red, it's still a distinct wavelength from the red cone's peak sensitivity (although the sensitivity ranges of the two cone types have a whole lot of overlap).

Sure the 4th color cone type has a peak at only 1 color (same can be said about the other color cone types). Presumably, the extra colors that she sees are due to color combinations with the other cone types.

Consider a human with some particular type complete deuteranopia, where he has no working green sensitive cones. To that person certain hues of what other people consider green, magenta and white (or more accurately some shade of gray) are all the same color (indistinguishable). He can distinguish red from blue, but all other colors in existence are perceived as just somewhere on the scale of red/blue combination.

"Green sensitive cones?" he may ask. "If I had those, they'd just help me see the grays a little better," he might answer to himself.

Now he magically gets his green sensitive cones (and associated nerves/brain functions) working. To his surprise he's able to see not only green, but all the color combinations that go with it such as yellow and cyan. He's now able to not only distinguish those particular hues of green from magenta, green from gray and magenta from gray (that were previously indistinguishable), but also cyan from purple (previously indistinguishable) and pink from yellow (previously indistinguishable).

So 1 extra color cone type corresponds to many more colors when including all the combinations.

I gather that whatever the tetrachromat sees is not as pronounced as my example above. But the idea that a 4th color cone type can lead many more perceived colors -- many more than just one extra color -- is a logical extrapolation, once one considers all the new combinations.

My problem with this is that she doesn't mention many more perceived colors. All she claims is to see normal colors but where a trichromat wouldn't see them. As a trichromat I have to say to the red-green colorblind guy, "I'm sorry, but I have an experience in reaction to many things that is completely unlike blue, and which I can't possibly describe in terms of blue." She, however, can describe her experience in terms any trichromat can imagine, which would be like if a trichromat could describe what it's like to see red, green and yellow in terms of shades and tints of blue.

What she describes is something I would be inclined to call "color>color synesthesia": the experience of one color seems to trigger the experience of more colors. But, there is no such thing as color>color synesthesia. Unless she is the first known case. (I'm not aware of any same sense synesthesias, sound triggering other sounds, or a taste triggering other tastes, etc. but if such existed it would be about the least likely of synesthesias to come to light.) Regardless, it sounds more like she's is experiencing that than the result of a 4th kind of cone.

http://concettaantico.com/2015/04/modern-muse-art-show/
Preview Concetta’s latest oil painting collection. A celebration of color inspired by contemporary themes.
Saturday, June 6, 6-9pm
1920 Fort Stockton Drive, Suite A San Diego, CA 92103

Yes, I would march right up to her and ask, "Are these really oil paintings? Or are they SNAKE OIL paintings?"

I don't know if you read the Snopes article I mentioned earlier in the thread, but it seems everyone now wants to be a tetrachromat, and it seems that is all due to Concetta. I am finding the proposition that she actually is a tetrochromat, or that any human tetrochromat actually exists, to be very weakly supported for all the hype that's been generated. I am leary of this fad, having been swept up in the hype about synesthesia created by Richard Cytowic. He ended up asserting that 1 in 10 people has some form of it, a claim that turned out to be a wild exaggeration.

 

[collinsmark]

My problem with this is that she doesn't mention many more perceived colors. All she claims is to see normal colors but where a trichromat wouldn't see them. As a trichromat I have to say to the red-green colorblind guy, "I'm sorry, but I have an experience in reaction to many things that is completely unlike blue, and which I can't possibly describe in terms of blue." She, however, can describe her experience in terms any trichromat can imagine, which would be like if a trichromat could describe what it's like to see red, green and yellow in terms of shades and tints of blue.

Oh, I totally agree that her descriptions of colors in the interview were absolutely pointless. She described how she experiences colors by naming other colors. In the end it's meaningless.

But in all fairness, the questions the interviewer asked were a huge part of the problem. The questions were leadingly pointless.

• "How would you describe what you see?"
• "Can you describe how something very familiar to everyone with ordinary color perception looks to you?"
• "I’m curious to know what your mother’s funeral was like: Did you see color in the black?"
• "What does skin look like to you?"
• "What it’s like when you look at your own blood or when one of your children is injured?"

I mean, how could anybody answer these questions? Even if they were posed to a trichromat or a colorblind person, they defy language to answer. Even now when I re-read these questions, I'm still thinking, "...wtf ?!"

What she describes is something I would be inclined to call "color>color synesthesia": the experience of one color seems to trigger the experience of more colors. But, there is no such thing as color>color synesthesia. Unless she is the first known case. (I'm not aware of any same sense synesthesias, sound triggering other sounds, or a taste triggering other tastes, etc. but if such existed it would be about the least likely of synesthesias to come to light.) Regardless, it sounds more like she's is experiencing that than the result of a 4th kind of cone.

Hee hee! I had to laugh out loud at that.

Yes, I would march right up to her and ask, "Are these really oil paintings? Or are they SNAKE OIL paintings?"

I don't know if you read the Snopes article I mentioned earlier in the thread, but it seems everyone now wants to be a tetrachromat, and it seems that is all due to Concetta. I am finding the proposition that she actually is a tetrochromat, or that any human tetrochromat actually exists, to be very weakly supported for all the hype that's been generated. I am leary of this fad, having been swept up in the hype about synesthesia created by Richard Cytowic. He ended up asserting that 1 in 10 people has some form of it, a claim that turned out to be a wild exaggeration.

It's good to be skeptical. I'm not thoroughly convinced that human tetrachromats exist either, which is why in my earlier posts I focused more on color perception in the animal kingdom. It's more certain that some non-human animals have tetrachromacy. But I'm willing to entertain the possibility that human tetrachromats might exist.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I mean, how could anybody answer these questions? Even if they were posed to a trichromat or a colorblind person, they defy language to answer. Even now when I re-read these questions, I'm still thinking, "...wtf ?!"

The questions are probably a natural consequence of her spinning her art as resulting from the condition. That is: she wants to imply the condition gives her a special experience that she expresses in the paintings. It seems to me, though, that painting things as she sees them ought to result in a painting whose colors are merely realistic in the eyes of a trichromat. Were I to do a painting for a colorblind person, why should the colors look any different to them than what they see in reality?

It's good to be skeptical. I'm not thoroughly convinced that human tetrachromats exist either, which is why in my earlier posts I focused more on color perception in the animal kingdom. It's more certain that some non-human animals have tetrachromacy. But I'm willing to entertain the possibility that human tetrachromats might exist.

I still think it's possible, but, prior to this thread, I had the wrong impression that they had locked it down rock solid that they existed. Now I see it's more of a "proposal" than anything else, and everything rests on one person, who is highly motivated to milk it for all it's worth. "The World's First Tetrachromat Artist!"

 

[collinsmark]

The questions are probably a natural consequence of her spinning her art as resulting from the condition. That is: she wants to imply the condition gives her a special experience that she expresses in the paintings. It seems to me, though, that painting things as she sees them ought to result in a painting whose colors are merely realistic in the eyes of a trichromat. Were I to do a painting for a colorblind person, why should the colors look any different to them than what they see in reality?

Scanning at her website again, yeah, there do seem to be some implications of that. Strange, I never noticed that the first few visits.

• "Concetta paints with 100 million colors"
• "See what you have never seen before"

Seems a little misleading when put in the context of her tetrachomacy, which is also a predominant part of her website.

As you say, if she chose her pigments carefully such that a given painting looked color-realistic to her view of the real world image, then it would look color realistic to me (a trichomat) as it would to a color blind person (going the other direction isn't the case though).

If one did make a computer monitor and video card system that can tap into the 4 primary, tetrachrmatic colors properly, and cameras were created with these 4 color channels, and images were created with these four color channels (which would require a revision to image file formats like png, jpeg, gif, etc.), then that 4 color system would work just fine for a trichromat like me, as it would a colorblind person. Sure, from my perspective it would be displaying some superfluous information, information that I can't utilize directly. But what I could see of it would be just fine; I couldn't tell the difference.

I still think it's possible, but, prior to this thread, I had the wrong impression that they had locked it down rock solid that they existed. Now I see it's more of a "proposal" than anything else, and everything rests on one person, who is highly motivated to milk it for all it's worth. "The World's First Tetrachromat Artist!"

The GLIMPSE journal study (Kimberly A. Jameson, Alissa D. Winkler, Christian Herrera & Keith Goldfarb) is somewhat compelling that her tetrachromacy exists. But studies such as this, to date, are rare (is this the only one?) Perhaps time will tell when more studies are done.

One possible criticism I have of the study (unless it's my own misreading or misunderstanding), is that for its version of the minimum motion isoluminescence test, is that for different tests it uses both a neutral background and "a novel color background designed to maximally engage the fourth photoreceptor class that potential tetrachromat artist CA was presumed to phenotypically express." I would think they would have provided a spectral plot (power spectral density) of this background. But there wasn't one that I could find. I can't even find any reference in the paper what wavelength her 4th photoreceptor is hypothesized to peak at (maybe I missed it. I presume around 600-630 nm, given the results, but it's never actually stated that I can find). At least they could have mentioned the peak [or crest, if that's the case] spectral wavelength of the novel background; did I miss that too? I can't seem to find any of it.

 

[collinsmark]

By the way, if you're like me and trying to figure out what the heck these minimum motion isoluminescence tests are all about, I found a video that might help, even if just a little. I'm pretty certain that these particular situations in the videos were not used in the Concetta Antico study (her's involved changing the intensity (luminance) of one of the colors until the perceived, relative motion stopped or changed direction), but I'm thinking they were on the same sort of premise, roughly involving the same neural pathways in question.

http://www.untere-weinegg.ch/ComplexMotion/

See the first video in the link (simple motion, color translation) [See one of the rotation videos]. That sounds, somewhat-sorta-kinda like (in a way) the test described in the paper. Sort of.

[Edit: Found something new. Her tests involved consecutively flickering 4 frames (two of which have time varying luminance of a particular color), in a loop, that gave the apparent illusion of rotation. So one of the rotation illusions might be better. The details of the Concetta Antico study are given here (skip to around 12:30 in the video) ps., you'll have to watch it on YouTube, the embedded version is disabled]: