The intriguing mystery of the magic blue-black dress gets solved by scientists after neurologic experiment aimed to determine humans’ perception of colors. Scientists and non-scientists people alike have been going bonkers trying to figure out what is it exactly that makes the famous blue-black dress so special.
After being the focus of online discussions and debates for more than one month, the blue and black dress is back in pretty much everyone’s attention. Scientists think they have managed to find possible explanations for the mystery behind its color perception.
For those who may not be familiar with the subject, the dress captured everyone’s attention because people could not determine whether it is blue and black or brown and black. Just like the century-long black or white zebra puzzle, the colors of the dress are perceived differently depending on the eye of the beholder.
Some people have stated that the dress is blue and black, while others have sworn that they see brown and black instead of blue. Neuroscientists have been ever since preoccupied to get to the bottom of the problem. They have, therefore, prepared numerous experiments to find out the factors that influence humans’ perception of colors.
1,400 participants have been asked to take a look at the dress and say which colors they see. Respondents were further handled a series of questions related to their day to day activities and lifestyle to see if there’s any link between the colors they see and their daily habits.
Results have shown that people tend to perceive colors depending on their lifestyle. More specifically, people who spend more time in the sunlight have a better perception of light, brown tones, whereas those who stay more often in the night light perceive bluish tones faster than other hues.
While this experiment accounts for other possible studies, many neuroscientists have concluded that the dress per se is strange. Despite the influence of the light, many of the answers that respondents have provided do not match this explanation.
For instance, scientists could not explain why men see the dress differently than women. Based on the collected data, women perceive the dress as brown, whereas men think it is blue.
Conflicting patterns have also been noticed within different age categories. Older men have stated that the dress is light brown as opposed to younger respondents, who agreed that the color is blue. These differences have not been explained by the current experiment, so further tests are expected in the near future.
Neurologists, who manifested particular interest in the mystery of the blue and black dress will continue to investigate the case. They have also added that they will be developing other studies to determine the influence of sleep on color perception.
For the time being, scientists are also considering that the material of the dress might have been purposefully created to induce people into mistake. The hypothesis that the pictures might have been technically manipulated to cause confusion has not been entirely excluded.
Image Source: Wired
Joe Hennessey
