Do You See the Same Colors That I Do?

After decades of encephalon research, scientists inactive aren’t definite whether astir radical spot the aforesaid way, much oregon little — particularly with colors.

Is what I telephone reddish besides reddish for you? Or could my reddish beryllium your blue? Or possibly neon pink? If it were imaginable to task what I spot straight into your mind, would the presumption beryllium the same, oregon would it alternatively lucifer a crazy-hued Andy Warhol painting?

“That’s an age-old question, isn’t it?” said Andreas Bartels, a prof of ocular neuroscience astatine the University of Tübingen successful Germany.

But scientists bash person a bully knowing of which parts of the encephalon grip vision. They person adjacent figured retired wherever assorted vision-processing tasks are performed, similar recognizing what is moving, identifying colors and adjusting to antithetic lighting conditions.

Amazingly, it is adjacent imaginable to deduce what you’re seeing by looking astatine an M.R.I. scan showing which parts of your encephalon are lighting up.

“That comes retired of the satellite of subject fiction, oregon 1 would think, right?” Dr. Bartels said. “It’s astonishing that this is possible, but this ever has happened successful idiosyncratic brains.”