Tetrachromatic Artist

 

 

Concetta Antico is an impressionist painter unlike any other, she see's more than one hundred times more color than most humans. Concetta is a tetrachromat. She describes the world as a mosaic of color. Tetrachromats have more cone receptors in her eyes that absorb color. The average person have three cones which enables us to process about one million colors. Concetta has four cones which makes her capable of picking up an estimated 100 million colors. People who have regular color vision have three cones, tuned to the wavelengths of red, green, and blue. These are connected to the X chromosome—most men have only one, but most women have two. Mutations in the X chromosome cause a person to perceive more or less color, which is why men more commonly have congenital colorblindness than women (if their one X chromosome has a mutation). But the theory stood that if a person received two mutated X chromosomes, she could have four cones instead of the usual three. It is thought that about one percent of the world's population has extra cone receptors. Five years ago, when Antico’s daughter was 7 years old, the family learned that she was colorblind. “I didn’t think it had anything to do with me, but she’s colorblind because of me. I have a mutation,” Antico said. The more she helps scientists understand tetrachromacy, she figures, the better they will be able to help people like her daughter. “If we understand genetic potential for tetrachromacy and how their perception differs, we can understand quite a lot about visual processing of color that we currently don’t understand.”  In addition to spending her time helping researchers better understand tetrachromacy, Antico hopes to open an art school for the colorblind and create an online platform for people around the world to discover if they are tetrachromatic. “I want to be sure before I die that I’m able to define tetrochromatism,” she said. “There have to be more tetrachromats out there. Maybe I can lead the way for that.”

http://www.popsci.com/article/science/woman-sees-100-times-more-colors-average-person