translated from Spanish: What color do you see the slipper?

A few days ago appeared a photo that, like the dress a couple of years ago, was viral quickly because those who see it can not agree on its color. Remember: In the case of the dress, some claimed it was black and blue and others, which was gold and white. The discussion is impossible to balance, and since we are we can put the picture here to revive the debate. 

Blue and black? Or gold and white?

Now, a new optical illusion (which had actually already appeared some years ago, but for some unknown reason reappeared) divided the already by definition divided world of users of Twitter: A slippers of a brand known that some see Pink and white and other celestial and grey. In the face of such a phenomenon, diverse explanations usually appear, but in general one predominates that it is completely false: that the color you see indicates the supremacy of one or another of your cerebral hemispheres. According to this hypothesis, there would be a hierarchy between the hemispheres of the brain that would determine, on a micro level, what color you see the slippers and, in a wider one, some fundamental traits of your personality. Origins
The myth, which was exploited in literature by Robert Louis Stevenson in his famous Strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, many years before the foundation of Neuroscientific research was laid down, ensures that in the more logical people it is more developed the Left hemisphere, while in the right hemisphere the artistic and creative skills would lie.

Literature, and then cinema, helped to disperse the myth of the dominance of the hemispheres.

But it turns out that this explanation, which was viralized as much as the color’s own challenge, is totally false. The idea that there can be an area of the brain that predominates over the other is a pseudocientífico myth that is easily ruled out when it is verified that, in perception, we use the brain as a whole. It is also a myth that logic and creativity transit through separate ways: the most rigorous of mathematicians needs to be creative to thrive and the most creative artist is worth the rationality to build quality art works. This does not mean that there are no actual lateralized brain functions, such as language, for which structures located in the left hemisphere are used above all. But infer from this that there may be a predominance of one side above the other has no justification from the point of view of science. Teamwork
In people who have no neurological pathology, both hemispheres are connected and operate jointly, in a coordinated manner. This is particularly evident in visual perception, where each eye sends signals to both the right and the left hemisphere, which work as a team to build an image.  Years of scientific research supported by increasingly precise technologies to monitor brain activity bluntly show that there is no evidence that a sector of the brain can be dominant over the other, much less than that Determine how logical or creative one is. But then, what happens? Why do we see the Slipper and the dress in different colors? The differences probably have to do with what is known as “white balance”, which is the process necessary for the photos or videos to see the colors as close as possible to how we perceive them in reality. Both in the case of the dress and in the shoes, the color of which we see the object depends on what lighting our brain interprets it is receiving. Therefore, it cannot be said that they are right or those who see one thing or those who see the other: perception is always particular, although in some cases the differences are more extreme. Notice, for example, what happens in the case of cube colors.

So you know: if they wanted to convince you, from this case, that you are more logical because your left hemisphere predominates over the right, or that you are more creative because the right predominates over the left, they lied to you. 

Original source in Spanish

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