Scientists Solve The Mystery of #thedress, Call It As One Of The Most Dramatic Examples of Color Perception

Looking at #TheDress, some people saw white and gold stripes while others saw blue and black stripes. However, the original photo, posted on Tumblr, actually had pixels of blue or brown.

Scientists dug deeper into the issue and after studying the phenomenon, concluded that it was one of the most dramatic examples of color perception. They added that it has do with how the brain filters light.

A study of more than 1400 participants, including 300 who had not viewed the photo before, found that people either saw blue and black, white and gold or blue and brown. U.S. neuroscientist Dr. Bevil Conway of Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that which color stripes a person saw in the photo depended upon whether their brains expected to experience natural outdoor light or artificial indoor light.

He concluded that people who saw white and gold may be more accustomed to outdoor light whereas people who saw blue and black may be more accustomed to indoor light. And the people who saw blue and brown fell somewhere in the middle.

Conway went on to say that the larger question is "what causes these differences in the population." He said that one way of looking at it would be to consider how "light is contaminated by outside illumination, such as a blue sky or incandescent light."

He also noted that a person's brain has to make a decision. It either has to get rid of shorter blue wavelengths of light or longer redder ones and this decision had an impact on how a person sees #thedress.

The paper on #TheDress has been published in the journal Current Biology.