Achromatopsia :: Biology Essays Research Papers

Achromatopsia When I was young, I was told that color blindness did non mean that the person saw the world like an old movie, and rather it meant that they could non distinguish between car park and red. I fantasy that this understanding was very advanced and would quickly sh ar my knowledge with whatever little-informed children. After looking into the matter, I have been forced to reject this inductance in favor of a broader range of diseases resulting in very divers(prenominal) types of inabilities to perceive color in a normal fashion. While the regular color blindness I was told about affects 8 percent of men and less than 1 percent of women in the United States (1), there are many opposite types. The most common types of color blindness, effecting red and green vision, are not as well life-threatening for the sufferers, who enkindle function unremarkably and do not have overly impaired vision other than an inability to distinguish between certain colors. There a re, however, more(prenominal) serious forms of color blindness, such as blue c ace monochromatopsia, partial tone rod monochromatopsia, and total rod monochromatopsia (3). The rod monochromats are also cognise as achromats, meaning they see no color at all. single about 1/33,000 Americans has this disease, and women and men are effected roughly every bit (3). This most severe variety of color blindness has many elicit symptoms which reveal a lot about rod vision. Achromats have what can be called night vision or rod vision. This means that the only(prenominal) functioning receptors in their retina are rod photoreceptors. The cones are either dispatch entirely or are present but the signals are not being processed for some reason. There are two types of achromatopsia, one is congenital and the other can be caused by brain damage, called intellectual achromatopsia (3). There are also varying degrees of achromatopsia, with some sufferers being open to distinguish some color and others absolutely none. I will localize on the congenital version since cerebral achromatopsia varies in its symptoms and cause sooner a bit, as well as being much more rare and so fewer cases have been studied. Congenital color blindness has more regular symptoms which can be used to demonstrate how rod-vision works. unitary of the most noticeable things about an achromat that reveals their vision deficiency is sensitivity to unclouded (8). Cone vision is what most people use during the day, since cones have less light sensitivity, meaning they can absorb more light without discomfort, although they too can be overloaded with light (like looking into the sun).