Do different people see the same colors differently? A recent review article suggests that genetic, physiological, and environmental factors contribute to a diversity in color perception between people, citing how the ability to differentiate between colors varies from person to person. The author cites results suggesting that, even within people speaking the same language, there may be differences in color perception ability as large as the differences between languages, suggesting the involvement of genetic factors.

A recent Harvard study investigated how looking, or visual search, works. The researchers found that the brain uses several heuristics, such as prioritizing objects in motion or specific shapes/colors to make the searching process more efficient. The study also suggests that our past experiences and what we find valuable can also influence where we look, and that we hold a mental image of what we’re searching for to guide us. This research promises to have applications in cognitive maps, illustrating how we understand scenes to guide visual search.

The idea of using Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) to model visual perception gets thrown around a lot. A recent study suggests that this may not be the best idea, as DNNs seem to fall behind quite a bit, especially in terms of object recognition. Differences in human and machine success rates in several visuals, such as distorted and adversarial images suggest that humans and DNNs have fundamental differences in visual processing. All of this implies that, while DNNs are powerful predictive tools, they fall short as explanatory models of human vision.