The science behind The Dress made simple.

Before you run off to get your eyes checked, science is here to help you out.

We’re all still talking about The Dress. But what is bugging us now isn’t what colour it is (ahem, it’s clearly blue and black), but why we’re all seeing it differently.

There are a lot of theories floating around and a lot of explanations (with varying levels of reliability) – so we’ve decided to break it all down.

Dr Neil Miller, an ophthalmologist at the Wilmer Eye Institute at John Hopkins University in Maryland USA has shared his opinion.

“It has to do with the individual’s color perception. Presumably, the cones—the photoreceptors in the retina—that see the primary colors (red, blue, and green) either are functioning differently in different individuals or the information that gets to the area of the brain that interprets color (V4) is interpreted differently by different individuals.

What is interesting in either regard is that apparently people see the dress either as black/blue or white/gold—nothing in between. Thus, there must be a very consistent difference between these two groups, whether at the retinal level or at the level of the cerebral cortex.”

So according to Dr Miller, the differences are both biological and healthy.

In short, because of the way that our eyes are wired, everyone sees the world differently, and that includes how we interpret colour.

Dr Julia Haller, the ophthalmologist-in-chief at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia, draws a simple analogy: “Why do some people love coriander and others say it tastes like soap? Why do some people have perfect pitch and others are tone deaf? It’s the same with vision — our sensory apparatus is fine tuned.”

So, our genetic diversity has resulted in us seeing colours differently (and singing karaoke with various degrees of success).

Other experts have been quick to point out that the differences also relate to how our brains perceive the context of the image.

Ron Chrisley, director of the Centre for Research in Cognitive Science at the University of Sussex in the UK is in the context camp.

“Which colour we see isn’t just a matter of the light coming into eyes, it’s the inferences that caused that input. We use the context to inform our colour experiences.”

A quick example: take a look at the following image.

Now place your finger over the join where A and B meet. Instantly, both A and B look grey.

It seems a lot of our judgement about colour depends on what we expect to see.

So, what we’re seeing when we look at the dress is a colour illusion. Our brain is being tricked by the surrounding colours.

When it comes to The Dress, our eyes are either adjusting to block the blue (so you see white and gold) or adjusting to block the gold (so you see blue and black).

The upshot is, like many things, the truth is a question of context and what our brain makes of that context.

According to Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist who studies colour and vision at Wellesley College in Massachusetts, who spoke to Wired Magazine: “Most people will see the blue on the white background as blue. But on the black background, some might see it as white.”

But by far the most important thing to take our of the science on this, the most important of issues: we’re all correct about the colour of The Dress.

So you can stop trying to throttle your partner/family/workmates/strangers on the internet.