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Shades of blue, green, brown, hazel, the world is filled with a vast array of eye colors.
And since these colors are determined by chemical and structural differences in the eye,
it might seem logical that different eye colors see the world in different ways.
But scientists haven’t really found evidence for that.
Other than health risks associated with certain colors, an eye is an eye.
Eye color mostly comes down to how much pigmentation you have in your iris.
Your iris is that colored area surrounding your pupil
the black hole in the center of your eye that lets light in.
People with brown eyes have dark irises because their DNA codes for genes that lead to the production of more melanin,
a brownish-black pigment that absorbs light.
While people with lighter eyes produce less melanin, so more light gets into their eyes
hence why they’re more sensitive to things like fluorescent lighting or the sun.
But melanin isn’t the whole story
shades of blue and gray are based on the quantity and arrangement of structural fibers like collagen,
which scatter light in slightly different ways.
But even then, what you ultimately end up with is different amounts of light entering different colored eyes.
So you might think those eye colors see things differently
like, one might have better vision.
But the long and short of it is: not really?
Studies have generally failed to find significant differences in seeing ability between eye colors.
Although people with lighter colored eyes may experience more discomfort on a sunny day
thanks to that whole more-light-in thing.
Some biologists think that may mean they can see better in dimmer conditions,
like when it’s cloudy or at night—but so far, this hasn’t been conclusively demonstrated.
Interestingly, studies have found that people with darker eyes tend to be worse at perceiving colors,
but that might be due to other differences between the eyes of the people tested, like pupil size.
And one weird thing that keeps popping up is a difference in athletic performance between different eye colors.
Several studies in the 70s and 80s suggested that darker eyes have slightly faster reaction times
on the order of 10 to 30 milliseconds.
Some found people with darker eyes performed better at reactive tasks like hitting an oncoming ball or boxing,
while those with lighter eyes were better at non-reactive tasks, like bowling or golf.
And that might have something to do with the amount or quality of light that melanin absorbs.
But the most likely hypothesis for this actually has little to do with eyesight.
It’s thought that melanin in the iris correlates to levels of neuromelanin in the central nervous system
a related set of pigments that may help speed up neuronal signaling.
And in general, the studies that found differences between eye colors tended to have
small sample sizes and questionable statistics.
More recent replication attempts haven’t gotten the same results.
So it’s hard to say if iris color really affects vision.
And even if it does, most experts think the effects are really slight.
What iris color does impact is eye health, as lighter eyes are more prone to problems like macular degeneration
the failing of the region of the eye that lets us see objects directly in front of us.
And that means people with blue eyes might want to be a bit more careful about
wearing sunglasses and eating lots of leafy green veggies to keep those macula healthy.
But really—those are things we should all do anyways.
So this week, we’ve all been talking about Skillshare classes we enjoy,
and I know I just talked about eyes and vision for this whole video,
but this is the last day of the week and it’s important to remember that sound also matters in video.
And luckily, Skillshare has all kinds of classes on audio recording, mixing, and mastering.
No matter what your skill level or what tools you have access to,
there’s most likely a class that will fit your needs.
Whether you just want to record a song, or need to mix vocals with background room tone on your iPhone,
or want to start your own ASMR channel, you’ll learn something on Skillshare.
I took this class on Building an Immersive Soundscape taught by artist and filmmaker L. Ashwyn Corris
because I wanted to learn a little bit more about Audition.
And what I liked about that class is that she approaches it in a hands on way,
explaining her technical knowledge but she’s also talking about how she thinks about
using sound creatively to set the tone of her piece.
If you want to check it out, Skillshare is offering SciShow viewers, and listeners, 2 months of Skillshare for free right now.
Just click on the link in the description to take advantage of this deal and to learn more about sound,
or video, or productivity, or really anything you can imagine!
Thanks for watching and thanks to Skillshare for not only offering our viewers 2 months of free classes,
but also for supporting SciShow and helping us keep our videos free to you always.
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