Pink ‘Bananas’, Blue ‘Oranges’ and color biasness of human brain: Colorology series by Dr. K

Color-preference is a psychological phenomenon, which involves human perceptual reaction to color and expressed emotions associated with those specific colors. However, the trichromatic human are extremely color biased and usually a homo-sapiens sees what he/ she intends to see! The bias-ness is so evident that in one of my exploratory color workshops, the whole group identified a Pink color visual as ‘banana’ (art by Dalibro) even when bananas are usually Yellow, Green or Red (occasionally). The same was repeated for a Blue visual. The group even announced that the Blue visual is of a ‘fascinating Blue Orange’ with Red pulp! The superpower of human brain helps us to imagine beyond the image. Though our past experience of a Banana and Orange (in the conventional colorway) never had such colors, but our biased mind forced us to believe that Banana can be Pink and Oranges can even be Blue.

Researchers have already proven that color is the most powerful communication tool, even more, important than a shape or explanatory word. The Visual Cortex portion of our brain not only processes other visual clues such as lines, form, and visual textures but also color. According to Bevil R Conway (2009), Color processing begins with the absorption of light by cone photoreceptors, and progresses through a series of hierarchical stages: Retinal signals carrying color information are transmitted through the lateral geniculate nucleus of the thalamus (LGN) up to the primary visual cortex (V1). From V1, the signals are processed by the second visual area (V2); then by cells located in subcompartments ("globs") within the posterior inferior temporal (PIT) cortex, a brain region that encompasses area V4 and brain regions immediately anterior to V4. Color signals are then processed by regions deep within the inferior temporal (IT) cortex including area TE. As a heuristic, one can consider each of these stages to be involved in constructing a distinct aspect of the color percept. The three cone types are the basis for trichromacy; retinal ganglion cells that respond in an opponent fashion to activation of different cone classes are the basis for color opponency (these "cone-opponent" cells increase their firing rate above baseline to activation of one cone class and decrease their firing rate below the baseline to activation of a different cone class); double-opponent neurons in the V1 generate local color contrast and are the building blocks for color constancy; glob cells elaborate the perception of hue, and IT integrates color perception in the context of behavior. Finally, though nothing is known, these signals presumably interface with motor programs and emotional centers of the brain to mediate the widely acknowledged emotional salience of color. Many theories of visual object perception assume the visual system initially extracts borders between objects and their background and then “fills in” color to the resulting object surfaces. K. J. Seymour et. al. investigated the transformation of chromatic signals across the human ventral visual stream, with a particular interest in distinguishing representations of object surface color from representations of chromatic signals reflecting the retinal input. The pattern analysis revealed that classifiers were able to decode information about which color was presented at a particular retinal location from early visual areas, whereas regions further along the ventral stream exhibited biases for representing color as part of an object's surface, irrespective of its position on the retina. Additional analyses showed that although activity in V2 contained strong chromatic contrast information to support the early parsing of objects within a visual scene, activity in this area also signaled information about object surface color. These findings are consistent with the view that mechanisms underlying scene segmentation and the binding of color to object surfaces converge in V2.

Coming back to my experiment, for both the visuals, the visual system of participants initially extracted borders between objects and their background and then “filled in” colors. The borders confirmed that the shape/ form appeared to be of a Banana and an Orange, though, after filling the colors (Pink and Blue) the color perception indicated otherwise. However, our color-biased brain denied accepting that those forms were not Bananas and Orange! Interestingly the participants were so sure that the visuals indeed were of Bananas and Orange that one even exclaimed ‘most probably, they have been painted artificially’! In the second phase of this experiment, I went ahead and asked the participants, whether they will be interested to ‘eat a Pink Banana or Blue Orange’, of which they were not very sure about its ‘taste’ and goodness. One mentioned that the Blue Orange appears ‘unreal’ and ‘poisoned’ hence she may not try it. The Pink Banana was still ‘acceptable’ as ‘food’. Hence, though the brain declared them to be Bananas and Orange, the past experience cautioned the body against the consumption of the same.

The ‘Pink Banana and Blue orange experiment’ (Copyright to Dr. Kaustav SenGupta, 2020) proves that color bias-ness can impact products and its perception. For example, the activated charcoal ice cream, though healthy and still appears as a ‘ice cream’ but it is not as popular as other color ice cream. The ice cream ( in India) normally appears in pastel and comfort colors other than ‘black’. In fact, in an Indian context, we hardly had any ‘black food’.  Hence, the popularity of activated charcoal ice cream remains restricted with our past experience mapping. Color Biasness impacts many business domain and brand needs to involve color-experts for deep-research, prior to selecting the colorways and colorstories of their product.

(Article copyright: Dr. Kaustav SenGupta 01.05.2021. Not to be republished without permission under the copyright law)