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Research Paper On Colorblinness

Decent Essays

Colorblindness

Think back to all of the beautiful scenes you’ve witnessed throughout your lifetime, whether it be the sight of your favorite candy as a little kid, the eye color of a stranger that caught your attention, flowers blossoming in the spring or a sunset during a summer night. Now, imagine a world with very little color or even worse, no color at all. No vibrant colored flowers, no mesmerizing sunsets filling the sky with layers of fire orange, violent and golden yellow and no colorful plates of food, a world filled with nothing but shades of grey and blinding lights. What you’ve just imagined is a life through the eyes of a person who’s colorblind. …show more content…

Colorblindness is more likely within men than women effecting 1 in every 12 men as opposed to 1 in every 200 women. Before understanding colorblindness we first need to understand how a properly functioning eye works. To be able to see anything our eyes have what are called photoreceptors. Photoreceptors are broken into two categories, rods, which are sensitive to light and cones, which allow us to see color. Within the cone category there are three different types of cones which are each responsible for our ability to see different points within the color spectrum (S-cones responsible for blue, M-cones responsible for green and L-cones responsible for red). Colorblindness is a result of one or more malfunctioning or missing cones. The severity of damage within a cone and/or the amount of cones missing a person has determines their type of colorblindness. There are three different types of colorblindness, monochromacy, dichromacy and anomalous trichromacy. …show more content…

I. Mr. I lived a life full of color up until the age of 65 when a car accident left him colorblind. One day while driving he was hit on the passenger side of his vehicle by a small truck. When visiting the emergency room he was told he had a concussion. While taking an eye examination he noticed that normal letters appeared to be “Greek” and he could not distinguish colors. Days later Mr. I was still unable to see color but he regained his ability to distinguish between letters, in fact his eyesight was better than ever. He recited improvement in the sharpness and focus of his vision stating “I could see a worm wriggling from a block away” and comparing his vision to one of an eagle. Later it was learned that Mr. I’s accident was followed by a transient amnesia and that he somehow lost memory of his accident. While continuing with his life after the accident Mr. I became depressed. His paintings which he once loved were now just “distasteful” and “dirty” looking, normal everyday routines were filled with confusion, lights/whites became blinding, television was hard to bare and scenes which he once adored such as rainbows and sunsets were now just a sad reminder of this new colorless life he was forced to live. This depression caused him to stop doing what he loved most, art. After his period of mourning and depression Mr. I then decided give life another

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