Panel discussion: #TheDress – What do we know?

How many colours we see is limited by our eye, which contains only three types of colour sensors. Using advanced techniques, vision scientists can take images of this “invisible” information and make it visible.

All activity in your brain – including those which mediates your perception of colour – is based on electrical messages between neurons. Vision scientists can measure these signals at the eye, and at the back of the brain.

Using techniques borrowed from astronomy, vision scientists can take high-resolution images of the retina, the fine layer of cells in the back of your eye.

In early 2015, an image of a dress polarised the internet: Some people saw it as black-blue, and some as white-gold. Three years on, we revisit the dress and discuss how vision science can explain this phenomenon.