Listen to this articleListen to more stories on hark A Dutch man known as MAH experienced a stroke in his 40s, but luckily, he did not suffer any lasting effects from it. However, MAH was puzzled when doctors asked him about colors during cognitive tests. He explained that this had nothing to do with the stroke; he had actually lived his entire life without a sense of color. Despite passing tests for red-green color blindness, MAH struggled to sort tokens into distinct colors and identify the colors of objects. This led researchers to diagnose him with color agnosia, a condition characterized by the lack of understanding of color. This is not a perception problem like color blindness, but rather an inability to comprehend color. Though rare, color agnosia can occur due to brain damage caused by a stroke. However, in MAH’s case, there was no obvious brain damage, and his mother and eldest daughter also had this condition, making theirs the first documented case of color agnosia that runs in a family.
J. Peter Burbach, a neuroscientist at the University Medical Center Utrecht, and his team have been trying to find other families affected by developmental color agnosia for several years, but this has proven to be a challenging task. MAH’s case is unique, as most people born with color agnosia do not perceive it as a problem that requires medical attention. It is only when persistently asked about color, like in the case of MAH after his stroke, that individuals realize their brain works differently.
Despite his lack of color recognition, MAH developed compensatory strategies. For example, he learned to associate the red and green buttons on his cellphone with urgent and nonurgent emails. Additionally, he excelled at discriminating between different brightnesses, but still struggled when faced with similar brightness colors. Color agnosia is distinct from other color-related conditions such as red-green color blindness, cerebral achromatopsia, and color anomia. People with color agnosia are able to perceive colors, but have difficulty connecting visual information to concepts like “red” or “green.” Therefore, they lose the concept of color itself.
Studying individuals with color agnosia allows researchers to better understand how the brain processes visual information. The Dutch researchers hope to find other affected families in order to identify a common gene mutation that causes developmental color agnosia. Such a gene is likely to influence brain development in various ways, potentially affecting not only color recognition but also other cognitive functions.
The fact that color agnosia can run in families is not surprising, as other conditions like prosopagnosia or face blindness, which is the inability to recognize faces, can also be inherited. The brain areas responsible for face recognition and color recognition are closely connected, so it makes sense that individuals with one condition may experience difficulties with the other as well. The team of researchers, led by Burbach, is still interested in finding more families affected by color agnosia in order to continue their study. If the garishly blue strawberry in this article didn’t strike you as unusual, the research team would like to hear from you.
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