Skip to main content

Main navigation

  • About BCS
    • Mission
    • History
    • Building 46
      • Building 46 Room Reservations
    • Leadership
    • Employment
    • Contact
      • BCS Spot Awards
      • Building 46 Email and Slack
    • Directory
  • Faculty + Research
    • Faculty
    • Areas of Research
    • Postdoctoral Research
      • Postdoctoral Association and Committees
    • Core Facilities
    • InBrain
      • InBRAIN Collaboration Data Sharing Policy
  • Academics
    • Course 9: Brain and Cognitive Sciences
    • Course 6-9: Computation and Cognition
      • Course 6-9 MEng
    • Brain and Cognitive Sciences PhD
      • How to Apply
      • Program Details
      • Classes
      • Research
      • Student Life
      • For Current Students
    • Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience Program
      • How to Apply to MCN
      • MCN Faculty and Research Areas
      • MCN Curriculum
      • Model Systems
      • MCN Events
      • MCN FAQ
      • MCN Contacts
    • Computationally-Enabled Integrative Neuroscience Program
    • Research Scholars Program
    • Course Offerings
  • News + Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Recordings
    • Newsletter
  • Community + Culture
    • Community + Culture
    • Community Stories
    • Outreach
      • MIT Summer Research Program (MSRP)
      • Post-Baccalaureate Research Scholars
      • Conferences, Outreach and Networking Opportunities
    • Get Involved (MIT login required)
    • Resources (MIT login Required)
  • Give to BCS
    • Join the Champions of the Brain Fellows Society
    • Meet Our Donors

Utility Menu

  • Directory
  • Apply to BCS
  • Contact Us

Footer

  • Contact Us
  • Employment
  • Be a Test Subject
  • Login

Footer 2

  • McGovern
  • Picower

Utility Menu

  • Directory
  • Apply to BCS
  • Contact Us
Brain and Cognitive Sciences
Menu
MIT

Main navigation

  • About BCS
    • Mission
    • History
    • Building 46
    • Leadership
    • Employment
    • Contact
    • Directory
  • Faculty + Research
    • Faculty
    • Areas of Research
    • Postdoctoral Research
    • Core Facilities
    • InBrain
  • Academics
    • Course 9: Brain and Cognitive Sciences
    • Course 6-9: Computation and Cognition
    • Brain and Cognitive Sciences PhD
    • Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience Program
    • Computationally-Enabled Integrative Neuroscience Program
    • Research Scholars Program
    • Course Offerings
  • News + Events
    • News
    • Events
    • Recordings
    • Newsletter
  • Community + Culture
    • Community + Culture
    • Community Stories
    • Outreach
    • Get Involved (MIT login required)
    • Resources (MIT login Required)
  • Give to BCS
    • Join the Champions of the Brain Fellows Society
    • Meet Our Donors

Events

News Menu

  • News
  • Events
  • Newsletters

Breadcrumb

  1. Home
  2. Events
  3. Mechanisms of color perception and cognition uncovered by #TheDress
Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences (BCS)
Cog Lunch

Mechanisms of color perception and cognition uncovered by #TheDress

Speaker(s)
Rosa Lafer-Sousa, Kanwisher Lab
Add to CalendarAmerica/New_YorkMechanisms of color perception and cognition uncovered by #TheDress10/27/2015 4:00 pm10/27/2015 5:00 pmBrain and Cognitive Sciences Complex, 43 Vassar Street, Picower Seminar Room 46-3310, Cambridge MA
October 27, 2015
4:00 pm - 5:00 pm
Location
Brain and Cognitive Sciences Complex, 43 Vassar Street, Picower Seminar Room 46-3310, Cambridge MA
Contact
Julianne Gale
    Description

    It is known that the visual system resolves shape ambiguity into one of several stable states—consider the famous rabbit-duck drawing, or the Necker cube (a simple line drawing of a 3-D cube). In each case, the brain makes a categorical decision about what is represented in the image (the Necker cube is either popping out or receding). While multi-stable shape illusions abound, multi-stability has never been observed for color perception. Color is notoriously ambiguous—many color illusions exist—but until now it has been thought that all people with normal color vision experience color illusions the same way.  How does the visual system resolve color ambiguity? In this talk I will discuss work that addressed this question by quantifying people’s perception of a particularly ambiguous image, ‘the dress’ photograph. The colors of the individual pixels in the photograph when viewed in isolation are light-blue or brown, but popular accounts suggest the dress appears either white/gold or blue/black. The disagreement about the dress color contradicts our intuition that color is an unequivocal, stable, physical property of the world, and led to one of the most widespread internet sensations in history. The phenomenon suggested a major scientific discovery: the either/or nature of people’s perception suggested that color can be subject to multistability.  But there is a less exciting alternative hypothesis, more probable given present knowledge of color vision: that the opposing camps arose because the social-media question was framed as a two-alternative forced choice, with options falling on either side of the truth. (Blue and white fall on either side of light-blue; gold and black fall on either side of brown.)  Perhaps all people see light-blue/brown, but report a best guess given two imperfect options.  We tested over 1400 people, both on-line and under controlled laboratory conditions. Subjects first completed the sentence: “this is a ___and___dress”. Then they performed a color-matching experiment that did not depend on language. Surprisingly, the results uncovered three groups of subjects: white/gold observers, blue/black observers and blue/brown observers. The findings, recently published in Current Biology (DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2015.04.053), document one of the most compelling examples of individual differences in color perception, and show that the brain resolves ambiguity in ‘the dress’ into one of three stable states, not unlike how the brain handles ambiguities in shape. But these states seem to be stickier than they are for shape. Only a minority of people switched which colors they saw (~11%).  It is clear that what we see depends on both retinal stimulation and internal knowledge about the world. Cases of multi-stability such as ‘the dress’ provide a rare opportunity to investigate this interplay.  In particular, we go on to demonstrate that ‘the dress’ photograph can be used as a tool to discover that skin reflectance is a particularly important implicit cue used by the brain to estimate the color of the light source, to resolve color ambiguity, shedding light on the role of high-level cues in color perception.

    Upcoming Events

    Jul
    Fri
    11
    Simons Center for the Social Brain

    Special Seminar with Dr. Balázs Rózsa: Real-Time 3D Imaging and Photostimulation in Freely Moving Animals: A Novel Approach Using Robotic Acousto-Optical Microscopy

    3:00pm to 4:00pm
    Add to CalendarAmerica/New_YorkSpecial Seminar with Dr. Balázs Rózsa: Real-Time 3D Imaging and Photostimulation in Freely Moving Animals: A Novel Approach Using Robotic Acousto-Optical Microscopy07/11/2025 3:00 pm07/11/2025 4:00 pmBuilding 46,46-3310
    Jul
    Tue
    15
    McGovern Institute for Brain Research

    Special Seminar with Liset M. de la Prida

    10:00am to 11:00am
    Add to CalendarAmerica/New_YorkSpecial Seminar with Liset M. de la Prida07/15/2025 10:00 am07/15/2025 11:00 amBuilding 46,3310
    Sep
    Fri
    5
    Simons Center for the Social Brain

    SCSB Lunch Series: Dr. Gwangsu Kim

    12:00pm to 1:00pm
    Add to CalendarAmerica/New_YorkSCSB Lunch Series: Dr. Gwangsu Kim09/05/2025 12:00 pm09/05/2025 1:00 pmSimons Center Conference room, 46-6011,46-6011
    See All Events
    Don't miss our next newsletter!
    Sign Up

    Footer menu

    • Contact Us
    • Employment
    • Be a Test Subject
    • Login

    Footer 2

    • McGovern
    • Picower
    Brain and Cognitive Sciences

    MIT Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology

    77 Massachusetts Avenue, Room 46-2005

    Cambridge, MA 02139-4307 | (617) 253-5748

    For Emergencies | Accessibility

    Massachusetts Institute of Technology