Posted on 11/30/2025 6:44:14 PM PST by Red Badger
Scans reveal a common brain pattern when people see red, green or yellow
Is my red the same as your red?
It’s a classic puzzler, one that’s fun to debate with your friends and family. Do colors look the same to you as they do to me? Now two neuroscientists weigh in — with a resounding maybe.
There were two possibilities when it comes to how brains react to color, says Andreas Bartels. He works at the University of Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in Germany. Perhaps everyone’s brain is unique. Each might have its own snowflake pattern of nerve cells responding when someone sees red. Or it could be that seeing red kicks off a standard, predictable pattern of brain activity. And that pattern might not vary much from you to me.
The answer is overwhelmingly the second option, Bartels and Michael Bannert (also at Tübingen and the Max Planck Institute) report in the October 15 Journal of Neuroscience. They found “commonalities across brains,” Bartels says.
He and Bannert started with 15 people. Each viewed shades of reds, greens and yellows. As they did, the scientists monitored nerve-cell activity across visual areas of the participants’ brains. The researchers then used these data to predict which color each person saw.
The results showed that neural reactions to colors are somewhat standard. They don’t seem to vary much from person to person.
But these findings can’t answer how it feels to see red, Bartels says. How your brain creates inner experiences that are unique to you is a much bigger question about consciousness. And it’s one that will no doubt continue to be debated for a long time.
I’ll take the red pill every time.
In broad terms, yes. I think we see the same colour, generally speaking.
However, some of us have less cones than others and some have more than average. Those people who have more can see subtlties in color that most of us would miss.
What if you’re color blind? You would still be seeing something different...I suppose. And would they correlate with what a non color blind person sees.
Has anybody ever painted a stop sign green? The answer is no.
So we all see the same color... Unless you’re Canadian or British... Then you see the same colour.
We have an engineer that is colorblind.
He sees in shades of gray. Like in old movies.............
I was trained as a professional photographer.
We learned that Japanese see blue differently than western eyes. It explained why Fuji film sold in Japan was different from Fuji film sold in America.
I see more shades of blue and green than most people do. That’s the next set of brainscans they need to do. Then do colorblind people.
This is all very interesting.
I see what you did there.
What about red green color blind folks, still the same pattern?
I think everybody is missing the point of this article.
We all can agree that a certain color is red, or green or purple.
But do you see the same color that I see?
If I could see through your eyes would I see the same colors that I see in my eyes?
IOW, what we both call ‘red’ if I were to see the same thing as you see would I call it blue?..............
“Has anybody ever painted a stop sign green? The answer is no.
So we all see the same color... “
Despite the aforementioned brain study, it’s still really impossible to prove... as neuroscience cannot (yet) definitively show what images are appearing in any individual’s mind.
Colors are technically different... that can be proven as they have different frequencies than can be measured. Red light waves have a lower frequency than green light waves. So unless we’re color blind, we can distinguish between different frequencies. It’s just the image of that difference to my brain might look different than to your brain.
Thank you. Well said.
The “Fechner color effect” is an illusion created by spinning a black and white patterned disk, that produces imaginary colors. Oddly enough, even those who are fully colorblind can “see” colors, because the colors are not detected by the ‘cones’ in the eyes, but are generated directly in the brain.
https://grokipedia.com/page/Fechner_color
So, red may not always equal red.
Does anyone recall the white vs. purple-shaded dress perception difference of ~2015?
Never heard of it....................
I find this study flawed in the extreme as it does not account for the fact we were hunter gathers through most of humans time on earth.
Colors and movement were essential in hunting and gathering. If a sub group saw the colors differently they would be at a disadvantage and be eliminated via survival of the fittest via evolution. It is bad when you eat a poisonous plant when you could not identify it due to a perceived color that it was not.
It is true that some very few people see colors differently. In this modern age this is not a disadvantage as we are no longer hunter gathers. Thus this genetic aberration will probably continue.
Here’s one for you ...
https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&opi=89978449&url=https://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DD9ZxRjItD1o&ved=2ahUKEwis0qbM2JuRAxUqL0QIHa7hH-IQ78AJegQIFRAB&usg=AOvVaw16yLleDhym0mBb2qdAfknC
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