Colorblindness: Red-Green Colorblindness
Colorblindness is the total inability or reduced capacity to distinguish between different colors under average lighting conditions. The term colorblindness refers to impairment of color vision but not actual blindness. Colorblindness is highly sex-linked and affects the larger percentage of males than females in a typical population. This is because the genes that generate photopigments are found on the X chromosome; the absence or damaged genes will therefore result to colorblindness in males in a higher proportion since males only have one X chromosome. The cause of this condition is via development of a single or multiple arrays of retinal cones that identifies color in light and relays the information to the optic nerve system. Scientist have also discovered that colorblindness can be chemical or physical damage of optic nerve. Nearly 8% of the male population and 4.5% of UK’s population are colorblind (Franzco, Tong, Zhang, & Ee-Ling, 2008). The Red-Green colorblind is highly dominant hence posing the question of what complementary variation of red and green colors are colorblind people, able to differentiate. Continue reading