I’ve taken a real interest in the neuroscience of art over the past few years, ever since I began using art-creation and art-learning as neuroplasticity (brain-plasticity) tools to help manage my own chronic pain and Mild Cognitive Impairment from a rare disease. This newish science goes by the name neuroaesthetics in parts of Europe, although that doesn’t seem to have quite caught in here in North America. Whatever you call it, it’s absolutely fascinating.
Case in point, my favourite combined art and science story of 2024. A quick-to-complete online test, “created by neuroscience and artificial intelligence researcher Patrick Mineault, invites participants to discover how their ideas of blue and green stack up with others”. After discussions over whether a particular turquoise was ‘blue’ or ‘green’, he realized that our brains may well be interpreting this particular range of colours differently – or that other factors might be involved – and then, just for fun, he set out to test this.
“What makes this experiment particularly intriguing is how it highlights the subjective nature of color perception. Factors like language, culture, and even the time of day can actually tint our view of the world… As the test progresses, you’ll be asked to group increasingly similar blue-green shades. Your responses are plotted on a graph, where you’ll finally learn how much bluer or greener you are than the rest of the population.” The test he designed is named “ismy.blue”, a shortened version of what’s being called: “Is My Blue Your Blue?”
What he found is that: “Colors are not a static entity, but are subjective both in personal and in cultural terms.”
“I’m a visual neuroscientist, and my wife, Dr Marissé Masis-Solano, is an ophthalmologist,” says Dr Patrick Mineault, designer of the viral web app ismy.blue. “We have this argument about a blanket in our house. I think it’s unambiguously green and she thinks it’s unambiguously blue.” Mineault, also a programmer, was fiddling with new AI-assisted coding tools, so he designed a simple color discrimination test.”
“‘Do we see the same colors?’ is a question philosophers and scientists – everyone really – have asked themselves for thousands of years. People’s perceptions are ineffable, and it’s interesting to think that we have different views.”
“Our brains are hard-wired to distinguish colors via retinal cells called cones, according to Julie Harris, professor of psychology at the University of St Andrews, who studies human visual processing. But how do we do more complex things like giving them names or recognising them from memory? “Higher-level processing in terms of our ability to do things like name colors is much less clear,” says Harris, and could involve both cognition and prior experience. The science may be tricky, but ismy.blue’s intuitive interface and visualised results were instantly engaging…”
“Most differences in color perception are physiological, like color blindness, which affects one in 10 men and one in 100 women. Others, however, may be connected to aspects of culture or language.” “Although Mineault doesn’t have any plans to publish the results, ismy.blue is a great example of citizen participation in science. “
“Science is historically insular, focusing almost exclusively on the WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich and Democratic). Opening research up to the public better equips scientists to understand the amazing diversity of human experience. “Most vision scientists have always gone ‘we’re all the same’, [but] there’s all sorts of interesting evidence showing that vision can be different across cultures,” says Harris.
Citizen science also does wonders for the relationship between an often-stuffy academic community and the wider public. “It’s a lot of work to communicate something to someone who’s not in your subspecialty, but I think that’s where the innovation happens,” says Mineault.”
And that was my favourite art + science story of 2024. You can take this quick test, by the way, here. What’s even more fun than taking it by yourself is to get together with others and take the test at the same time (you’ll each need your own devices or monitors) – then compare scores/ratings. Be warned, though, that your own rating might change depending on the settings of your screens… you can check this by taking the test across all your devices. Have fun, and Happy New Year!