The press release just came out for my simple proposal for harnessing our color vision for better sensing clinical skin color changes of patients, along with some news stories, which can be linked here…
LA Times, Toronto Sun, Forbes, Times Union (and video), Troy Record, BoingBoing, AOL News, Times Colony, Diagnostic Imaging, Ratschlag24, Press Release, and my own SB piece. Also, here’s the paper itself.
This proposal for medicine is a corollary of my research on the evolution of color vision — it’s for seeing emotions and states on the skin of those around us — something you can read about in my book, The Vision Revolution. I have a variety of pieces on the research here.
And here’s a figure that helps summarize the “oximetry” point in the press release…
Mark Changizi is a professor of cognitive science at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and the author of The Vision Revolution (Benbella Books).
If your theory is correct, then since reading emotions is so important, I would expect the fashion industry to hone in on colours and cut for clothes which would heighten the ability to read emotions. But our clothes don’t.
Are we using clothes for camouflage?
Or is you theory limited to only undressed savages and not civilized, clothes humans?
Good questions. It all depends on what fashion is “trying” to do. Selection pressure on the fashion industry may not be for maximizing emotion reading. Clothing might be desirable to be far from skin tone because it helps the wearer’s skin tone look smooth and uniform, hiding any blotchiness that may be present. And, given that the meaning of colors may come from emotions, people may select colors because of the mood they wish to signal, which can sometimes help elicit certain behaviors of those around them. E.g., red clothing leads the looker to view the red-wearer as more attractive, so fashion selects for that. At any rate, even though we’re clothed and no longer naked, our faces tend to still be visible, the premier color-signaling spot for primates with color vision (second, perhaps, only to the genitalia).
We will have to pick up the book. Its a pretty inquisitive subject.
Hope you enjoy. And the oximeters in our eyes won’t put you out of business!