The response to the color of the dress is within our brain

Medical content revised by - Last revision 23/04/2015
The response to the color of the dress is within our brain

The color in which ones and others see the world most famous dress has a scientific explanation. Dr. Ignasi Jürgens, medical director of the Institut Català de Retina and head of the Department of Retina of the Center, says that “it is an issue related to visual perception.  It is not a problem of the eye or retina, but that it’s the processing that makes the brain of this information. This perception, the lighting and the shadows that may have at the time that one look at the picture, are the factors that explain these perceptions”.

If we measure a color spectrum, we have an objective fact of the frequency of wave that reflects that object as an object by itself alone, has no color. We must bear in mind that there is no color in the physical world, there is light.  In this case, although the original color of the dress is blue and black (this way the photoshop would confirm it to us for example), the lighting of the photo alters the color sensation in some persons, what provokes that many persons see it of white and golden color. In this case, the lighting makes that it applies a filter and our brain understands that in this environment must make a correction (we already have in the subconscious).

The brain of people who see the white dress and gold, you can have interpreted that the clothing is located in a lighted room with a window and where it goes into a blue reflection. On the other hand, the person who sees it blue and black, may have interpreted that dress is illuminated by an artificial, more yellowish light rather. Our eyes try to decipher what is the context in which there are the colors that they perceive. When the light and color are combined, different brains will assign more weight to one to another, resulting in this way in different perceptions.

It is most likely a picture of all ambiguous by our brain. It comes down to individual perceptions and how and from where the image is observed. In the end, is an optical illusion like so many others we know.

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