IUBio

"New" colours possible?

Tris null at 127.0.0.1
Wed Oct 31 11:21:08 EST 2001


"Richard Norman" <rsnorman at mediaone.net> wrote in message
news:8j00utcenk00t9pqginjdimfecsui3quer at 4ax.com...
> On Wed, 31 Oct 2001 11:38:28 +0000, "C.J.L. Wolf"
> <C.J.L.Wolf at ncl.ac.uk> wrote:
>
<snip>
> JD Mollon is certainly someone who does a lot of work in this area.
> However a search of the US National Library of Medicine (PubMed at
> http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/PubMed/) for "Mollon" gave 100 hits, none
> of which seemed to be this work.  Searching "Jordan" gave 1184, far
> too many to scan, but the combination Mollon and Jordan gave none.  I
> also found nothing in the 19 hits on  "tetrachromatic".  Do you have a
> citation?
>
> What does it mean "colours that no-one else could [see]".  Does
> it mean she could separate test stimuli as looking different when
> others thought they looked the same?

Yes.
"Drs Gabriele Jordan and John Mollon of the University of Cambridge have
been trying for some years to confirm the existence of tetrachromats, with
good theoretical reasons. Squirrel monkeys are generally dichromatic, but
research carried out in 1986 showed that many females possess genes that
make them trichromatic, giving them a wider range of colours than their
companions."
...
"The experiment showed that the potential tetrachromats were much more
finicky about declaring a match to be exact, and made different matches to
others. "I want to be able to add more orange to the mixture, not red," said
one subject. "It's the wrong kind of orange," said another, "it looks rather
pink when I add more red." This suggests they can make real colour
distinctions between shades that look identical to the rest of us. Dr
Jordan, now at the University of Newcastle, is starting further tests to
show conclusively whether she has discovered true tetrachromats. Getting the
right equipment can be a challenge: how do you know the apparatus is
producing the right signal if it all looks the same to you?"


>From http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4128183,00.html

http://lists.tamil.com/lists/health/2000-11/msg00020.html

The only references I can find, unfortunately.






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