| Jay Neitz | |
|---|---|
| Born | John Francis Neitz 30 April 1953 Choteau, Montana, United States |
| Residence | Seattle, Washington |
| Nationality | American |
| Fields | Color Vision Neuroscience Molecular Genetics Psychology Psychophysics |
| Institutions | University of Washington |
| Alma mater | University of California, Santa Barbara |
Jay Neitz is professor of ophthalmology and a color vision researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington in the United States.
Contents |
According to Jay Neitz, each of the three standard color-detecting cone cells in the retina – blue, green and red -- can pick up about 100 different gradations of color. But, he says, the brain can combine those variations exponentially, multiplying each new variety of cone by 100, so that the average human trichromat can distinguish about one million different hues.[1][2]
This means that a monochromat can see 100 different colors, a dichromat can see 10,000 different colors, a trichromat can see 1,000,000 different colors, a tetrachromat can see 100,000,000 different colors, and a pentachromat can see 10,000,000,000 different colors.[2]
Neitz and his wife Maureen Neitz, Ph.D., a professor of ophthalmology at the University of Washington and began training in 1999 two dichromatic squirrel monkeys. After five months of gene therapy treatment, the monkeys began to acquire trichromatic color vision. They say this almost seemed to suddenly occur overnight. After that, they spent a year and a half to test the monkeys' ability to discern 16 hues. [3][4]
According to Gerald H. Jacobs, Ph.D., a research professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who was not involved in the research, this means that color blindness can be cured. "This is also another example of how utterly plastic the visual system is to change," Jacobs said. "The nervous system can extract information from alterations to photopigments and make use of it almost instantaneously." [3]
According to Jay Neitz, “If the neural circuits for color vision are sufficiently plastic, it may be possible to use gene therapy to replace missing photopigments in the eyes of color blind humans." Neitz further states that since apparently "the neural circuits can handle even higher dimensions of color vision that could come from artificially adding a fourth cone type, it is possible that gene therapy could also be used to extend normal human color vision", making human trichromats into tetrachromats. [2]
According to Neitz, “The first appearance of the photoreceptive structures that were the precursors to the earliest eyes probably appeared between about 800 and 1100 million years ago (MYA).” [2]