Colours are an illusion created by the brain: our colour percept does not represent the light reaching the eye from a given surface, but instead it represents the brain's estimate of that surface's reflectance. Colours hence appear constant even if the illumination and therefore the reflected light changes - this is referred to as colour constancy. The neuroscience of colour is hence also the science of conscious perception. I will review experimental evidence primarily from neuroimaging that sheds light on neural processing of colour in the human brain: Is there a binding problem between colour and motion?
How do memories of object colours influence neural processing? Do colours in Mondrians activate the same circuits as colours in movies? What are neural effects of paying attention to colour? Where does the brain represent information of the (changing) illuminant and where of (constant) surface reflectance, i.e. colour? Apart from the above I will briefly introduce key technologies such as brain imaging and multi-variate pattern analysis and the concept of predictive coding.

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