« One gene between tiny dogs and giant ones? | Main | Gene mutation turns girls into boys »

Even black-and-white bananas look yellow

Experiment reveals how expectation interferes with perception.

When we look at a banana, does our brain tell us it looks yellow, even if it isn't? A recent study shows that it does.

Read the story here.

Posted by Nicola Jones on October 15, 2006 06:00 PM |

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://blogs.nature.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/1308

Comments

Is the picture accompanying the article grey as the caption suggests? Or is it yellow? I am getting confused.

Posted by: Olivier | October 16, 2006 07:31 PM

Perhaps this can be addressed in terms of a long-term temporal color afterimage.

[Editor's note: But the picture of the banana started in a randomly chosen colour, not just yellow... yet still people saw it as yellow.]

Posted by: Sam Rawlings | October 16, 2006 07:51 PM

Post a comment

Comments will be reviewed by staff before being published. You can be as critical or controversial as you like, but please don't get personal or offensive, and do keep it brief. Excessively long entries may be cropped. Remember this is for feedback and discussion - not for publishing papers or press releases.

We strongly encourage you to use your real, full name. Email addresses are required: this is just in case we need to discuss your comment with you privately. They won’t be published.


Please enter the numbers you see below - this helps us to cut down on spam. Note that attempting to post within 30 seconds of hitting ‘preview’ or ‘post’ can cause the system to think you are spamming the site. If you are having trouble with this system, you can instead e-mail a comment to 'inthefield at nature.com'.

Search