The Desert Mermaid

<---- has the fourth cone mutation.

All it's done for me is make Hawii'an shirts really obnoxious.

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...I've always wanted to get that as an aftermarket mod.

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It's not all it's cracked up to be.

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pixel39.livejournal.com

The 70s revival must be particulary painful.

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This distresses me. I always hoped it would be really awesome.

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Really, I have no idea what it would be like not to see that way.

It doesn't come up very often, but like in the article mentioned later, I can often see depth of water that other people can't, and I'll often spot trails in greenery that other people miss.

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Hmm. I wonder how subtle tetrachromatism can be, and how unsubtle that test is. I have the other markers - colorblind people in my close family - and I've always noticed that I can see subtle gradations in color that other people can't. (I used to work in a print shop, so it came up. A lot.) That article talks about difference in the wavelength sensitivities of the fourth cone as the defining factor. I can test this!
Eeeeenteresting.

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No color blindness in my family, but both sides have a high incidence of dysXias ( I'm dyslexic, dyscalculic, and dysgraphic ).

I wonder if it's related?

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I am also curious ... last I checked, you were a dude, and yet the articles all figure it for an X-chromosome factor. Perhaps you are EVEN MORE MUTANT THAN HAS BEEN ESTABLISHED ALREADY?

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Lord only knows.

I heard "What are you, some kind of mutant?" a lot when I was growing up.

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*points* SHUN THE WEIRDO! SHUUUUUN!

Seriously, that's cool. Bet you could make a few bucks offering to get your head/DNA/whatever scanned.

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I've had an MRI of my brain, there was a pituitary tumor scare a few years back.

Actually, I'm due for another MRI, but no job = no insurance, and I don't have the several grand on hand to drop on one.

They didn't give me a copy of my results, when people say "What kind of sick mind would say that?" I wanted to offer graphic proof.
Bastids.

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A recessive trait carried on the X chromosome is more likely to show up in men, because we only have one.

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Yes, but that's because you only start with one X.

Women start with two, and each cell randomly deletes one or the other redundant X chromosome. From what I'm gathering, the tetrachromatic cone is a mutant version of a normal red cone--so tetrachromats would start out with one "normal cone" X and one "mutant cone" X. Since each cell is random it should be about a 50-50 split in the eyes between cells that use the mutant cone and those that use the normal cone.

With XY, you've either got the normal red cone or the mutant red cone, but no chance of getting both.

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Ahh, I see what you mean. It depends on being heterozygous (so really, they're both dominant). Eeenteresting...

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Now that I think about it, it would have to be more than just a different cone, wouldn't it? Some of the wiring must be different too. Otherwise both different kinds of cones would be interpreted as the same color by the brain, despite detecting somewhat different wavelength ranges. Unless the brain can pick up on the pattern when they don't quite match...

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Well, human tetrachromacy is still disappointingly situated along the visible spectrum. I had expected the wiring to be a lot more complicated than researchers are finding, though--that link in my original post talks about how apparently we (or, mice, at least) have the neurological processors but lack the detectors--like the colorblind guy who still experienced color sensations due to synesthesia.

I honestly would've expected it to be more complex than that.

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Visual wiring is actually amazingly simple, especially for what it is. I do research on the color perception of eyeless cnidarians, even, and it's very evident that even at that level they can sense the difference between colors.

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The research I am doing on this seems to indicate that the brain is actually picking up on the difference between the responses of the two (the normal red or green and the red/green). I wonder very much how this changes the perception of someone like biomekanic, who should, I think, only have the one. As he can't then be seeing the difference, what is he seeing?

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Perhaps. ....the neuroscientist would like to karyotype you and test your brains. She will restrain herself.

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http://news.softpedia.com/news/Half-of-the-Women-See-More-Colors-than-the-Rest-of-the-People-58351.shtml

Wait, the what now?

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pixel39.livejournal.com

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I get the thing with beige, supposedly my car is beige*, but it looks silvery to me. Everyone else says "beige".

*and not "badge" as I first wrote.

Edited Date: 2009-01-23 12:17 am (UTC)

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perlandria.livejournal.com

Yea, I found out about the extra receptor when I asked a friend what color she would call a wall, taupe or a pale aubergine? She replied 'ummmmm beige. Do you see UV or something?'. So I started researching odd ways to see. Lots of them are on the X, and you have one of those :D.

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There's a 4th cone mutation:
Red
Green
Blue
and
Red/Green

Centuries ago, back in the early 80s, OMNI had an article about it. They included a color test, I came up positive. It appears that human eyesight is shifting to become more color responsibe for unknown reasons.

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Fascinating!

This actually makes me wonder something: I'm guessing I'm not a tetrachromat (though it'd be fun to take a test), but there are some colors I see in my synesthesia that I cannot duplicate outside my head. They're all sorts of bizarre combinations of colors I do see, so I didn't think of them as new colors, but now I'm wondering about that.

There was a synesthete case study who was color blind (they didn't specify what kind of color blindness) and claimed that some of his synesthetic visions were in "Martian colors." So I guess it's more evidence for the wiring.

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Test is here: http://www.blogadilla.com/2008/06/08/are-you-a-tetrachromat/

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The color from out of space!

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Dude, you don't have to be in the X-Men to pick up on that.

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zimwifepgk.livejournal.com

The title of your post makes me smile, because I didn't notice it until I read your last paragraph and thought, 'Sounds like what happens whenever I try to imagine what octarine looks like!' XD

You must learn a TON by researching these little details.

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*grin* It has taken me down some curious paths! Sometimes I get some interesting trivia, and sometimes I wind up studying something for years because I was digging for a little detail. (I started learning ASL years ago because of a deaf character and am still studying it!)

Octarine was one of my favorites, especially since e describes the color as "disappointing," which makes me laugh.

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agenttrojie.livejournal.com

Well, I'll do some more digging once my mineralogist friend gets online, but some minerals fluoresce under UV light - scheelite is a great example - it glows sky blue under shortwave UV, and sometimes if it has trace molybdenite it glows greenish. Natually, however, it comes in several colours including colourless. I know that's not exactly what you meant, but could it be useful?

As I said, I'll do some more digging on the subject and see what I can turn up. What gemstones were you thinking of, particularly, because whether or not you can get an element in a mineral depends on its molecular structure and whether or not said structure will bend enough to let the element of interest in ...

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Dude, I wondered if you would have any thoughts on this matter.

Any gemstone would work fine; I was thinking clear ones that can be faceted, but other than that scheelite might even work.

This is an uninformed idea, but I was thinking some minerals that come in many colors--like corundum (I'm a big fan ;) ), or topaz--seem to be able to accommodate all sorts of impurities. I'm trying to figure out what might show up as totally ultraviolet--thus, what would look like a colorless stone to us would have a brilliant hue to these aliens.

Hey, while I have your attention, I have a question: is it possible for a rocky moon like ours to be rosy pink? I did some research on minerals that might work, but I'm still not sure how to even look it up.

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agenttrojie.livejournal.com

Well, scheelite can be cut as a gemstone, from memory; I think it was once used as a diamond substitute. It is commonly colourless (also green, brown, and a few other colours) but shows up as bright sky blue under UV light. I think that would correspond to being seen as sky blue in UV vision because don't they use UV light to show up the markings that bees can see on flowers?

Tungsten and molybdenum both cause UV fluorescence, so they're probably good impurities to start with. If I turn up any more I'll let you know.

As to rocky moons, sure they can be pink. Provided the rock they're made of is pink :) Ours is mostly made of the equivalent of our mantle rock, however, which is things like lherzolites, which are dark greens etc, but I don't see a reason that a moon couldn't be Mars-coloured - it would just need Fe-rich surface rock and, uh, at least trace water vapour in its atmosphere, from memory. But it's not IMpossible.

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Thanks! Yeah, scheelite shows up in my book as an "unusual" gemstone because it's too soft to cut. (The book doesn't mention the sky blue part--cool! It doesn't necessarily need to look like any color we might know, either--it may be another color entirely. But I'll definitely write down "tungsten" and "molybdenum" for future reference!)

As for the moon, I considered a surface rock with high iron content, but I'm worried it'd be too orange. The problem is that I'm looking for a seriously pink moon--rose or raspberry color, something taking its first steps along the scale toward purple. I've found minerals the color I want, but trying to figure out if they would work as the surface of an entire moon. I had considered some manganese compounds, which can provide the pink color--but once again, I'm not sure if I could cover a moon with even a thinnish layer with any degree of real probability, since I have no idea how rare they are. (It's possible this moon can be viewed as an interesting rarity, but I still want it in the realm of the possible.) My best possibility, I think, is making the moon's past include some violent volcanic activity.

Or maybe I'm not making any sense. The life of a writer, I guess--you gotta try to be an expert on everything, and it doesn't always work.

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agenttrojie.livejournal.com

No, you make absolute sense. I'll do some more digging for you as to likely candidates for pink surface rocks. But as it's a moon, I'm guessing no past atmosphere, no hydrosphere? So hydroxides, carbonates etc are probably out? Volcanic activity's probably your best bet. In which case, you could have, say, a rhyolite with a really high K-spar content ...

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