New glasses for people with colour-blindness
Sunday, February 17 2013 | 00 h 00 min | News
American neurobiologist Mark Changizi has developed eyewear that corrects colour-blindness and clearly enhances colour vision.
This innovation is based on a new colour vision theory, proposed in 2006 by Mark Changizi and his colleagues. According to the leading hypothesis at the time, colour vision evolved to help us recognize nutritious fruits and vegetation in the forest. Mark Changizi, however, says that it evolved to perceive oxygenation and hemoglobin variations in skin in order to detect social cues, such as emotions and the state of mind of our friends or enemies.
Mark Changizi later co-founded 2AI Labs with Dr. Tim Barber, and designed the O2Amps eyewear to help medical staff better identify veins and bruises in patients. However, while trying out the glasses, Dr. Daniel Bor at the University of Sussex, who is himself colour-blind, was suddenly able to see colours he had never seen before. With the glasses, he passed the Ishihara test, which he had previously consistently failed.
The glasses are being marketed under the name Oxy-Iso.
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