Is it true that men distinguish fewer shades of color than women?

There is an opinion that where a woman sees coral, peach, salmon and fuchsia, the man sees only pink. We decided to check whether women are physiologically arranged so that they are able to distinguish more shades than men.

The inability of men to recognize many shades of the same color is written not only in social networksbut also such media as "RIA Novosti" Lenta.ru, "Channel One". The same feature of male vision is devoted to a widely known meme.

The eye, despite its small size (about 2.5 cm in width and depth and 2.3 cm high), is a very complex organ. The retina Contains Photoreceptors - photosensitive cells of two types: sticks and cones. The sticks are responsible for twilight vision, and cones - for the color. The photoreceptors contain opsins - receptors that absorb the electromagnetic energy of the photon, convert it into an electric pulse and transmit it further into the brain. He, in turn, comparing information from all opsins, creates a color image.

Knuns in the eye of a person represented Three different types, in each of which the corresponding type of opsins, sensitive to a certain range of the length of the light wave. Type S (Short) cones are responsible for recognizing the short-wave part of the spectrum, that is, blue-violet shades, type M (Middle) is sensitive to medium waves and yellow-green colors, and type L (LONG)-to long waves and yellow-red palette.

OPSIN structure s Recorded On the 7th chromosome, and M and L are encoded on the sex X-chromosome. This explains the fact that men suffer from color blindness much more often than women.

Scientists from the University of New York Demonstrated A group of volunteers with normal vision and not suffering from color blindness, outbreaks of light of different colors. As a result of the experiment, they came to the conclusion that men generally distinguish the shades of the entire spectrum worse, since they almost always needed a large wavelength to distinguish a shade than women. Scientists paid special attention to medium and long waves (opsins m and l, respectively) - there the “lag” of male vision was the strongest. At the same time, the researchers did not limit themselves to the explanation that the difference comes exclusively from a different chromosomal set. Research manager, professor Israel Abramov suggestedthat "the main role is played by testosterone, the action of which leads to the formation of several other neural connections in men."

However, not only the physiology of the eye itself, but also the complex of psychosocial aspects plays the role in the difference in shades. So, a group of scientists under the leadership of A. Halbert and J. Ling Tied A similar feature of vision with evolution - women engaged in gathering, distinguishing shades of fruit was more important than men. And J. Young Notesthat girls since childhood have more classes associated with different colors than boys. Moreover, the difference in shades also has linguistic Context - the name of a certain wave is not in a general word, for example, “green”, but its additional classification: emerald, olive, mint.

Thus, men really distinguish less shades than women. However, this is not an occasion to be upset: in a healthy eye, each type of cone with isolated recognizes about 100 shades, which in general gives approximately million distinguished colors, so even with this feature of vision the world for men remains still colorful and bright.

Is it true

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Read on the topic:

1. What are the limits of human vision?
2. The history of color vision