Difference in hues between eyes

[Enanimate]

Recently I have become curious of a difference between then colors I see with my left and right eye. After reading a bit about people with a similar experience I have found a pattern, almost every story I have read it seems that the right eye sees deeper colors such as red better and the left lighter colors like yellow. I'm curious to see what anyone else has to say about this. Thank you in advance.

 

[phinds]

On a related note, I have, twice in my life and separated by about 30 years, had brief (a day or two) occasions when one of my eyes (don't remember which one) went blind to yellow. This was seriously weird. Groups of bushes or tree canopies that had mostly green but some yellow would look solid rich green with one eye and normal with the other eye.

 

[BillTre]

Normally differences in color vision are result from the person's genetics.
Having a color receptor gene that does not make the normal product would result in non-normal detection of color visually.
Normally, this would be the same throughout the body.

The eyes could be differently by color blind genetics in the following ways:

1) People can be composed of cells with different genetics if their bodies were composed of a mosaic of cells from two separately conceived embryos (fused before birth to form a single person). If one pre-fusion embryo had normal genetics for color vision and the other carried mutant color vision genetics, and if the cells sorted out un-equally between the two eyes, then on eye could have mutant color vision abilities while the other had normal vision.

2) The color receptor genes (the genes most frequently affected in color blindness) are on the X-chromosome. Normally, there is one X-chromosome in males and two in females. X-chromosome gene expression in females is cut in half (to be the same as in males) by turning off expression of one of the females two X-chromosomes. Randomly, one of the female X-chromosomes are inactivated and form inactive Barr-bodies. This happens during embryology after many cells have been made and results in a mosaic mix of cells in females which express genes in either one chromosome or the other. unusual sorting of cells during embryogenesis could result in one eye having an excess of cells with one or the other genotype (and therefore phenotype). This could lead to different color sensing abilities in the two eyes.

3) Temporary (or in some cases permanent) problems due to stress, trauma, migraines, or maybe some other kind of localized challenge to function.
These causes could affect one eye more than the other, and could be temporary on different time scales.

 

[Enanimate]

Okay, that makes a lot of sense thank you for answering.

 

[Alejandro94]

This also happens to me, and I've been reading a lot about it online, even in old threads from this forum. Indeed, it seems that most people see brighter colors in their right eye, and warmer colors in their left eye. In my case, what I see from my left eye seems to be covered in a red/yellow filter. I found references to this paper, which may be key to this issue: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1471-4159.2007.04766.x/full

And then, I came up with an explanation that may work. I realized that at my home, both my bed and the living room's sofa are located so that, when you are sitting or laying on them, the window (which is directly hit by the sun for several hours every day) is on your right side. I spent a considerable amount of time in these rooms during my early years, so I think this unbalanced amount of light exposure may have led to my right eye becoming more sensible to light.
This explanation is not perfect; in most schools and libraries (at least in Spain), the students' desks are placed so that the windows are on the left, to avoid your arm (if you are right-handed) screening the light while you write. Anyway, I guess that what matters most is what happens during the first years, when the visual system is not completely mature yet.

 

[Dr Aaron]

Transient visual detection anomalies could occur for several different reasons. The perception of color is a brain function, based on the optic nerve signals received from the eyes. The newer information significantly differs from what I was taught back in medical school, when we read xrays by torch-light. We once thought that all visual reception and analysis was performed by one "vision center" in the occipital lobe at the rear of the brain. We now have clear evidence that this area performs a majority of the visual perception functions, yet other areas scattered throughout the brain can and are observed. This can be quite varied though, according to the development of each person. Anything affecting the functioning of these areas can cause the brain to adversely perceive visual cues. However, the optic nerve gains its information from the retina of the eye, and there can be conditions that will affect bloodflow, nerve metabolism, etc. that could be a cause for such transient effects. Even fluctuating pressure from developing glaucoma could produce such effects.
Still, long-term pigmentation is, as noted above, of genetic origin with a few developmental opportunities for anomalies. Most likely, you had such genetically-coded eyes prior to birth and they are simply being expressed.