It’s the dress that’s sparking conversation all over the internet and making web surfers everywhere scratch their head in wonder over one question: What color is this dress? It’s very likely you’ll either see the dress as “White & Gold” or “Black & Blue,” and if you’re one of those few people who can see both set of colors, consider yourself lucky!

How on earth is that happening? According to the blog i09, an optical illusion is what’s happening. The explanation behind why some people see colors different then our own comes down to the neuroscience of perception, a problem researchers have wrestled with before.

“Light enters the eye through the lens—different wavelengths corresponding to different colors. The light hits the retina in the back of the eye where pigments fire up neural connections to the visual cortex, the part of the brain that processes those signals into an image. Critically, though, that first burst of light is made of whatever wavelengths are illuminating the world, reflecting off whatever you’re looking at. Without you having to worry about it, your brain figures out what color light is bouncing off the thing your eyes are looking at, and essentially subtracts that color from the “real” color of the object,” according to bloggers at i09.

Turns out, the dress is really blue and black, but in photo, the color of the dress lies in the brain of the beholder. Do you see it or are your eyes deceiving you?

SHARE this with your friends to see if they see the same colors as you!