Neuroscience: The Colors of Neuroscience

By Amina Green- 2022

Neuroscience:

The Colors of Neuroscience

“Shishi!”

Silence.

 “Shishi! Shiloh Sandréas, come downstairs,” Shiloh hears her mother call. She rolls around in her bed and responds with a grumble too quiet for her mom to possibly hear. 

“¡Ven aquí! It’s dinner time, and today we’re having freshly baked empanadas!” At the mention of empanadas, Shiloh jumps out of bed with such speed that she’s greeted with intense dizziness. She stands still for a good three seconds to come back to reality before heading for the door of her room. She turns the knob and swings the door open, leaving her plain, colorless environment to enter what feels like a furnished palace. Compared to her room, at least, the rest of the house is as wondrous as the Biltmore Estate.

With newfound energy after seeing the colors of her home, she races down the narrow hallway and practically slides down the stairs. Once at the bottom of them, she loses balance but quickly catches herself on the railing. She then proceeds to make her way into her family’s small dining room. At the sound of her footsteps, her mom snaps her head toward Shiloh’s direction and gives her a hearty smile.

“Shishi, you made it. That’s the fastest you’ve come to dinner in a while,” her mother laughs. Shiloh feels her face heat up in slight embarrassment but responds nonetheless. 

“Well, when you make your kid’s favorite food so well you better expect her to come running,” Shiloh responds. Her mother shakes her head with a light chuckle before telling Shiloh to go make her plate, which she does.

Shiloh walks into the kitchen of her household in search of a paper platter. The kitchen is almost the size of her room, only what feels like a few feet wider, so it doesn’t take her long to come face to face with her plate-filled destination. She opens the cabinet above the sink to grab a paper plate big enough for multiple pieces of her favorite dish. When she closes the cabinet door, she allows herself to admire the colors that decorate all the walls of her Latina household. All the walls except for her bedroom. She wonders how the backsplash tiles use color theory to bring together the blue, orange, and sprinkles of green together. “Maybe it has to do with the neutral colors mixed in between…” she mumbles to herself.

As it’s fair to guess, Shiloh is an artist. She participates in watercolor painting regularly, and her favorite part about it is seeing the colors form in the water on the canvas. She also enjoys watching how colors from completely different spectrums of the wheel merge together on the paper; making such a unique image pleasing to the eye. Painting is one of the few activities that have made her happy throughout the current rough times. Her family financially struggles with making it through the days, so she uses the colors of the rainbow to relax the bubbling stress in her mind. She leaves the kitchen with a slight smile at its scenery and sits down at the table, ready to snatch the empanadas off of it and onto her plate instead.

“You always look so happy when you’re out of your room, Por qué?” her mother asks. Shiloh looks up from her plate and makes eye contact with the gleaming curiosity in her eyes.

“I don’t know…” Shiloh mumbles before taking handfuls of empanadas and dropping them onto her plate. She picks one back up and anxiously takes a bite out of it. She doesn’t like talking about the subject because she feels as if her reason is childish. The only reason why she likes coming down here is because of the colors on the walls. ‘Colors making someone happy? That’s ridiculous, there’s no real reason behind it,’ Shiloh thinks to herself with a frown.

“Is it the decorations?” her mother asks, making Shiloh freeze. “I always find you staring at them with such admiration. Even when you were getting your plate, it took you so long that I peeked inside to see what you were doing, and there you were, gazing at the walls again.”

Shiloh takes a second to think about her response before deciding to tell her mother the truth. She’s so passionate about colors and art that she wants to know why. Why do colors, even the ones in the art she didn’t make, make her so happy? Why do they fill her with such joy and serenity?

“Yes, but no. It’s actually the colors, not the decorations. I love the colors in the walls, picture frames, and more. My room is so bland with just white walls and brown flooring, but the walls outside of it are full of burgundy, orange, blue, green, purple, and more. While in my room, I always get the sudden urge to paint a rainbow on the wall, but sedate that urge by painting on my canvases instead. I have such a strong passion for colors, but I don’t know why. Is it because I do art, or am I just a child?” Shiloh vents in what feels like a single breath. Her mom simply stares back with a few blinks before smiling warmly at her daughter.

“Shishi, you sound nervous. Don’t be. There’s nothing wrong or different about the way you feel about the bright colors in this house. In fact, I feel the same way. That’s why I got it built this way!” her mother jokes.

“What do you mean?” Shiloh asks with a tilt of her head, putting down her empanada.

“You know how we have the five senses? Smell, touch, taste, sight, and hearing?” her mom asks before continuing when Shiloh nods, “well, the one we’ll be focusing on is sight. When your eyes look at something, you’re able to visualize the images they process into your mind. This process of vision is done by using the optic nerve.”

“The optic nerve?”

“Yes, the optic nerve is a transmitter that connects your eyes to your nervous system, or in simple terms, your brain. When your brain receives the information transmitted to it from your eyes, the colors that are included in the visual information affect your brain waves. Those brain waves then proceed to release hormones that affect your emotions. Your brain must release extra hormones if you love colors this much!” Shiloh’s mother laughs.

“So, my brain reacts in different ways depending on what it sees. And, depending on how it reacts, it may release hormones that affect my mood?” Shiloh asks for more clarification.

“Yes! And remember, hormones are chemical messengers in the brain, so they don’t just affect your human emotions. In this particular case, though, they do.” 

“Oh, okay. Wow, so that’s why I like colors so much? This whole time I thought that there wasn’t any valid reason behind it, that I just liked it because, well, I did.” Shiloh admits with a small frown. 

“Of course not, dear! That’s what I meant by saying that there’s nothing different about the way you feel about colors. Everyone feels emotions stemmed by just seeing colors, just on different levels. You must have gotten that intense emotional response to colors from me. I guess you could call our genes pretty artistic,” her mother jokes with false triumph. 

Shiloh laughs at her mom’s attempt in showing pride and smiles. She feels herself bubbling with serotonin in the current moment, happy to know that she’s not alone in how she feels. Scientifically not alone, at that.