A TEAM of scientists at the University of Bradford is looking for people with colour blindness to volunteer for a study that could lead to better understanding of the condition.

Colour vision deficiencies, often called colour blindness, are a common condition with approximately one in 12 men and one in 200 women being affected.

Red and green colour deficiencies are the most common type, with blue/yellow or no colour vision at all (achromatopsia) less common.

The can affect many aspects of everyday life from picking out clothes to being unable to tell the difference between two sets of sports teams. It can also cause problems with warning lights in the car.

The University team, led by Professor Declan McKeefry, is looking for people with colour blindness and members of their family with normal vision to take part in a 90-minute study using the latest optical technology.

The test results will provide them with a detailed report on the type of colour vision deficiency.

PhD student John Maguire said: “We hope that through this study we will be able to create a test that takes a measure of the response of the different cone cells to test for colour vision problems rather than getting the patient to report what colours or patterns they can see.

"Such an application would be beneficial in testing a paediatric population and individuals who struggle to communicate.”

The researchers will place electrodes around the eye and on the head of the participants and then stimulate the individual groups of cone cells in the eye by flashing very precise sets of coloured lights.

The signal recorded from the electrodes, the electro-retinogram or ERG will provide them with information about how those cells are functioning in the eye and also how the signal is being transferred to parts of the brain.

Mr Maguire added: "We’ve been exploring ways to isolate the ERG responses from different cell populations in the retina.

"We not only want to study the responses from the cones as a whole, but we also want to be able to stimulate and examine the responses from individual cone types, red, green and blue separately.

“One of the outcomes of our recent work has been the discovery that red and green cones respond in very different ways to a flash of light. We think this reflects their contribution to colour vision processing and in so doing provides us with an objective functional test of the integrity of the red-green colour vision.”

The project will allow the researchers to further explore the basic characteristics of the cone-isolated ERG and how it can be used in the assessment of normal and abnormal colour vision.

Anyone wanting to be part of the study can get in touch with the university by emailing j.maguire@student.bradford.ac.uk