Sensation and Perception

How our minds sense and perceive things can vary from person to person. Sometimes this is because of our brains directly and how they're wired, and others could have to do with our experiences. I read and watched some stuff about it, and I actually had a different personal explanation of how our brains could perceive things differently. I'll get to that in a little bit.

There was an article about "the dress." If you don't know what "the dress" is, it's a picture of a dress that was posted to the internet a few years back. Many people claimed that the dress was black and blue while others said that it was white and gold. I remember when it happened, people at my school were talking about it everywhere. I myself saw a white dress with gold stripes on it. I couldn't believe that others were seeing a black dress with blue stripes. Turns out the dress really was black and blue. To this day, I, along with many others, see the dress as white and gold.

The article explained what happens with the lighting and as it enters the eye, and if I'm completely honest, it didn't make much sense to me at all - it would be a lot easier to understand this (and many of these other things) if it was actually taught to me in person. Apparently, how we perceive the colors of the dress have to do with the time of day it is when we look at it. If we look at it during midday, it appears more white and gold, but if we look at it at night, it can look more black and blue. Depending on the time of day, it can play a role on what initial first burst of light goes through to our brain... or something like that. This doesn't make much sense to me since I've looked at the picture late, and it still looks white and gold, and when people that were seeing black and blue at my school, it was around noon. So I don't know. What colors do you see?

Here's a link to the article: https://www.wired.com/2015/02/science-one-agrees-color-dress/

Another thing I looked at was a video about Synesthesia. Synesthesia is the cross-blending of senses, such as saying that a certain number is a certain color, even thought numbers don't have any real color, or that a certain color would sound a certain way, even though colors don't really have sound. David Eagleman talked about how how we use synesthesia could be inherited genetically. I found that very interesting, thought I wasn't sure if that was always the cause. Of course, I don't think he thinks it's always the cause either. They're still doing research on it, but I have my own theory. I think a big part of it is little things that indicate certain colors for numbers or letters, or sounds for colors, when we are young, how we encounter them throughout our life, and what kinds of emotions we associate them. For example, when I was little, I had puzzle of the United States. Each state was one of like five or six different colors. Now, even when I'm 19 years old, I think of many of the states as those same colors that I associated them with though that puzzle. I still picture Texas being green, Missouri being red, Arkansas being orange, Illinois being yellow, Iowa being blue, and Alaska being purple. This is all because of how I perceive those states when I was young. Same goes for letters. I had flashcards of letters that I had to color. So now I picture A being red or pink, B being blue, C being red, D being brown, and so on.

Here's a link to the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FTr1VnXKr4A

- Christian