new color?

in reality our minds are bound to the laws of physics and laws of science and matter and space and time.

However in a dream our minds are in another relm.

For example although in real life we see the color red its actually atoms that make up our brain that interact with each other and interpret these colors to give meaning to them.

But if we cut the middle man (the actual color) its our brain that actually makes the color. Its hard to explain, but red doesnt exist its our minds that make the color red.

Its the brain that makes red

So my question is can our minds make another color that doesnt exist according to the light spectrum.

Who's to say that these atoms cant interact in another way to make a different color

While we are awake our brain uses external sensory input to make sense of the world around us, but in dreams everything is interenal, whats holding us back from seeing new colors?

For example if someone did see a new color in his dream, how could he explain that color to us? he cant say "it was a mix of blue and brown"

This is a really interesting topic, because science alone cant anwser this, i mean do we really feel pain? or is it atoms that interact with each other that makes the paradoxial feeling of pain

What is Feeling?

thats a good question
its all laws of physics and whos to say that we cant break those laws
thats what i beleive, but monks do it all the time, All feeling is, its an electrochemical signal sent to your body. thats all it is, your brain telling you you CANTdo something....

I would look at it the other way around. There is an infinite spectrum of light that we see every day. The limiting factor is our brain interpreting and categorizing this spectrum. The only reason we see stripes on a rainbow, is because our brain can only come up with so many colors to fill in the infinite gradations between the wavelenghts of light.

I would say, its your brain that limits what colors you see, so it would be impossible to come up with a new one.

If you did happen to invent a new color in a dream, your brain would probably associate it to a certain wavelength of light in the real world, and you would start seeing it all the time.

What's interesting to me, as an artist, is that everyone sees color differently. Men are more responsive to cool colors (greens and blues) compared to women, who are more stimulated by warm (reds and pinks). This is not just a trained environmental bias. Men can see further into the ultraviolet end of the spectrum, and women can see the opposite- towards the infrared.

Imagine this- if my eyes are genetically more tuned to the long wavelength end of the spectrum, than the blue that I see, you would see as purple. The Green that I see, you would see as blue, and the red that I see, you would not even have a name for.

Very interesting topic… :)

I think sensing pain is not as elusive a topic as seeing colours and understanding what colours are. Experiencing pain has been explained quite thoroughly on a biological, chemical and physical level.
At least to me (as I’ve studied barely any physics) understanding even the basic nature of colours is much harder than understanding the interactions of sensory neurons, electrical impulses, the brain and everything else involved in the experience of pain.

I don’t think the brain is the most limiting factor in seeing (or rather not seeing) different colours, even though a person’s internal schemata affect the way they perceive colour (or wavelength).
The range of colours we are able to perceive is largely restricted by the photoreceptors (particularly cones) in the retina. Some reptiles and insects (e.g. snakes, spiders) can see infrared and ultraviolet light and the colours ‘in them’, because their cones’ peak sensitivities stretch further than ours. If our vision was similarly broadened from the tiny area of visible light we see to both the infrared and UV light (or even further) I can’t even begin to imagine the sort of colour circus we would face every day. Perhaps it’s in the interest of our mental sanities to have such ‘restricted’ colour vision. :P
I think the colours in our dreams might be restricted similarly, even if everything else is in the limits of our imaginations. How could someone imagine/dream something that they’ve never seen? This sort of relates to some of the threads I’ve seen around. Threads like “ Do blind people dream?” etc. Only we can’t get information about the possible new colours by gathering information with our other senses, so where would we start in order to comprehend the nature of these colours?

Any way I’m sure there are people here at DV who are much more educated on the topic than me, my thoughts are quite crude and unrefined at the moment, so I’ll stop here…:embarrassed:

By the way if you’re interested in colours and dreams Howie has created a thread called colour quiz (in Research Team). It’s pretty interesting, you might want to participate. :)

Simply put, If your brain can't process it, (Real-life or dream) it can't be perceived. It could be perceived as something else. If you can't imagine it, you can't perceive it.

*sigh* You're getting yourself into a self-imposed whirlpool like so many other such topics I've seen here.

Your brain didn't make up the colour "red". The physical world has many colours. People in ages passed created language to interact with each other verbally and in more detail. Hence, the language is what makes the colour red to be called "red".

Colours are named upon observation. You cannot create something you don't know of. Thus, in a dream, interacting with your own mind, if you do not have an outer source, you will not "create" any new colours. Everything in your mind within this life is information you've gained from the world.

In essence, until someone shows you a new colour, you won't conceive it. Be it a new colour that appears in the world for your viewing or a colour you gain from an astral store of knowledge that you access with your mind...a new colour would come from a source independent of yourself.

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Originally Posted by Merlock

*sigh* You're getting yourself into a self-imposed whirlpool like so many other such topics I've seen here.

Your brain didn't make up the colour "red". The physical world has many colours. People in ages passed created language to interact with each other verbally and in more detail. Hence, the language is what makes the colour red to be called "red".

Colours are named upon observation. You cannot create something you don't know of. Thus, in a dream, interacting with your own mind, if you do not have an outer source, you will not "create" any new colours. Everything in your mind within this life is information you've gained from the world.

In essence, until someone shows you a new colour, you won't conceive it. Be it a new colour that appears in the world for your viewing or a colour you gain from an astral store of knowledge that you access with your mind...a new colour would come from a source independent of yourself.

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So if a person was born color blind, not because his brain was damaged but because his eyes have a problem would he ever see color in his dreams?

Colour blindness isn't an illness that prevents a person from seeing in colour. A colour-blind person just doesn't see as many colours, not differentiating them as much, from what I read on the topic.

But if a person was born without seeing colour, seeing everything in black and white and did so his entire life then, of course, he/she would only "see" dreams in black and white. All the visual aspects of dreams for such a person would be black and white, no colours, since the person has never seen colours.

You gain knowledge of something when you experience it.

Some people who have used psychedelic drugs claim to have seen infrared an ultraviolet colors. I remember reading about someone who said that "ultraviolet rays are really ultra-violet", which is the closest thing I've read about seeing or imagining a new color.

I was thinking about sound too. There's infra- and ultra- frequencies of sound. However, people with hyperacusis or similar conditions are actually able to hear ultrafrequencies (and sometimes infra), and there's nothing so different about them. They're just higher/lower pitched sounds than usual. Perhaps it could be similar with colors? Like seeing infrared as just another kind of red?

people can have 360 vision in a Lucid Dreams, so that says a lot about doing the impossible in a lucid dream

This discussion has been had a few times before.
I think that Ariadne and Merlock are on the money.
I think that we believe we see a different color. Our perception is that of a new color. However I don't believe this to be so.
ROYGBIV, The spectrum. It is, from one end to another, what it is. Our eyes can not see more. Physically speaking. Our minds think differently.
In all the many variations of red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet, lies an obscure variation of what already is.
:rainbow:

http://www.dreamviews.com/community/showthread.php?t=17243&highlight=color+quiz
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/showthread.php?t=34874&highlight=color+quiz
http://www.dreamviews.com/community/search.php?searchid=470813

Our colour spectrum is limited by our eyes, anything that is above our wavelength will either not get picked up by the eye, or our eye will see it as white, with perhaps a purple bloom to it.

Now, the OP is thinking of the brain this way:

Atom A and atom B reacts, we see colour RED.
Thus, if atom A and atom C were to react, we'd see colour BLUE.
This, however, is not the case. Our brain is much more complex than that, and if we had to experience a new colour in our dreams, not only would our brain have to mess up, but out of the millions and billions of atoms in your brain, it would have to hit the just right connection and mix, and perhaps project a new colour into our vision, for a 1:1000 of a second.

Maybe this happens all the time? We can't really know, unless we could somehow convert the processed eye-sensory into actual stand still pictures, or super high FPS films.

Contrary to my own belief, Can we imagine another valid color?
Is it possible for our creative, imaginative and intuitive brains to conjure up a color not physically compatible to humans but physiologically?

Our brain is virtually compatible with most colours, it's our eyes that can't comprehend the wavelengths, or they just shrug them of.

But no, we can not imagine another colour. Our brain might by mistake imagine a new colour though, which few but some people report.

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Originally Posted by Marvo

Our brain is virtually compatible with most colours, it's our eyes that can't comprehend the wavelengths, or they just shrug them of.

But no, we can not imagine another colour. Our brain might by mistake imagine a new colour though, which few but some people report.

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As you can see in my first post that I am on the same wavlenght as you. We are seeing the same colors. ;)
'As an attempt to not be stuck with or adhere to what all the signs point to I bring up points to ponder.
Can we imagine another physical universe? (One we have obviously not seen)
Can our circuitry put together enough known data to compile something new?

A great saying: Brilliance is not thinking outside the bos, it is realizing there IS no box. :shock:

Ha ha
In a spelling error, I stumbled on something better:
Brilliance is not think of your boss, it is realizing there is no boss!

Hmm... I have a small controbution.

For the past year or so, I've been able to hypnotize people into believing very subtle things such as that their left arm is lighter than their right; nothing much at all, but it's pretty entertaining. One day, maybe a little under a year ago, I decided to try something new and try to get one of my friends to see my normally brown hair as purple. It didn't quite work, at least not in the right way. For the next few days, he claimed that saw my hair as being a completely new color that he named "Glorbinge" or something like that. All along, I was pretty sure that he was faking, but it may add at least a microscopic amount of validity to the new color arguement. I might talk to him again, as he would have no reason to lie about it by now.

Hmm, interesting subject, and nice question. I never focused on this subject very much.


I don't think we can imagine any other color.

Nope it is impossible. Any chemistry professor or student can tell you this in about three sentences.

We can't make up a new color in our brain, seeing as our eyes are built to see the spectrum of light. The spectrum of light is shown as such. Now if we could see infared, or microwaves.. Then we would most likely see in brightness, there is no such thing as a 'new color' but it is a neat concept. Color is formed usually when electrons drop shells and whatnot, so there really isn't much change!

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Originally Posted by TheEnergyIsAroundUs

Nope it is impossible. Any chemistry professor or student can tell you this in about three sentences.

We can't make up a new color in our brain, seeing as our eyes are built to see the spectrum of light. The spectrum of light is shown as such. Now if we could see infared, or microwaves.. Then we would most likely see in brightness, there is no such thing as a 'new color' but it is a neat concept. Color is formed usually when electrons drop shells and whatnot, so there really isn't much change!

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Well, that just about sums it up, thanks for the information!

I disagree, our brain is like the worlds most powerful supercomputer, and I am pretty sure that it could come up with new colors. In our dreams we are not seeing with our eyes, we are seeing with our brains.

Our eyes use 3 different transmitters to tell the brain which colour we are seeing.Ours eyes normally see the red, the blue and the green. (same colours used for TV and for hexadecimal images). It doesn't mean those are more important colours: actually the whole concept of primary colours is a human concept. If, for example, we see the colour purple, our eyes will send to the brain the information of both red and blue. Our brain then interprets it, creating the colour purple. It would simply be too complicated for our biology to have different transmitters for every colour.

There is also the difference between the pure purple and the pigmented purple. If we mix blue and red paint, our eyes will detect both colours simultaneously: and thus sending both information to the brain. Our brain will then interpret it as purple too. If human beings could see the whole scale, this wouldn't happen: we would see red and blue separatedly, instead of purple

White is an interpreted colour, resulting from the mix of all other colours. Black is the absense of colour, because of the absense of light. Get a green and a blue piece of paper, and turn of all the lights: they will look the same in the absense of light.

Anyway: while our vision (not only our eyes, but also our brain) relies on 3 basic colours to communicate between the eye and the brain, the interpretation is fully made by the brain. Just look around you: how is that so that we perceive colours in that way at all? Why does red look like red, and not like blue? I guess it means our brains can actually come up with a new colour interpretation, but we could easily mistake it for a colour we already know... or maybe not recall it correctly.
The proof of this is that birds can see ultraviolet colours in a different aspect: it is like a new colour for them. Nails and hair reflect ultraviolet colour, so they would probably see it in humans :>

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Originally Posted by Sugarglider11

In our dreams we are not seeing with our eyes, we are seeing with our brains.

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In your dreams you don't see at all. Dreams are conceptual thought. When dreaming you have no sensory input whatsoever. The conceptual thought, of which dreams are built, is interpreted into sensory information since that's what we're used to intaking during waking life.

And, once more, colours are a part of the physical world. We witness them. So it doesn't matter how "powerful" our mind is, unless we gain knowledge of a new colour from an independent source (even if that source is, say, hidden knowledge in our own mind for some reason), we won't conceive a new colour.

I disagree with Merlock. I've often heard "You can only dream what you've seen". But that doesn't explain me dreaming of people I've never seen before. And if you argue I can compose a "new" person out of people I've seen, why can't you compose a "new" colour out of colours you've already seen?

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Originally Posted by MisterHyde

And if you argue I can compose a "new" person out of people I've seen, why can't you compose a "new" colour out of colours you've already seen?

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You don't compose new characters out of characters you've seen. You do it out of traits you know of. Same with colours. You already know all the possible colours there are in the physical existence of this world. You see them in the waking world. The entire spectrum.

Thus, if you want to create an original dream character, you create it with a set of traits but those traits are given (a nose but with a certain size, skin but with a certain colour and texture, etc.).
Colours aren't a complex structure such as a character. They are basic. Thus, they are given.

It's not possible.

We're not talking about seeing new wavelengths of light, we are talking about how our brain simplifies the light it does see, and categorizes it to build a model for the world.

Your brain is already making up colors. We interpret the light that hits our eyes. Our eyes pick it up and then our brain categorizes it into different hues. We see a full continuous gradation between blue and green. At some point our brain draws a separation between the blue and the green, and sends them into different categories for interpretataion.

You can mess with this when you take a swatch of color halfway between blue and green, and alternately put it next to it's compliment. Your brain will see it next to the
yellow, and say "that color is blue". Then your brain will see it next to the red and say "that color is green". Put it next to pure white, and your brain will say "that color is a blue/green mix".

Our brain could easily have another category hardwired halfway between blue and green, so that you look at a rainbow ROYG...T...BIV.

I say it is not possible, because our brain DOES NOT do this during a situation where we would NEED it to. There's no reason to assume it could do this for fun, when it has many situations during the day when it is straining to try and differentiate similar colors, but it can not.

The ability for your brain to come up with a whole new color category would be a major advantage, and would completely change the way our minds model the world around us. It just doesn't happen.