Analysis of Complementary Colors Through Brain Response and Human Perception

Abstract

Colors have an important role in human perception. They imply feelings like urgency (red), productivity (yellow, green), restful (blue) and other sensations. Researchers have been investigating color impact in interface design. Some authors studied color influence in the brain waves aiming to verify changes of humor and/or performance while using an interface. The purpose of this study is to verify the difference between colors in brain response, human perception and performance while playing a game that was designed with a combination of fifteen rectangles filled with complementary colors and a single one filled with a different color. Ten volunteers performed the experiment where they were advised to identify the different color target. The time of performance and the EEG were recorded, and then the power spectral density was extracted and analyzed. Results showed an increase of alpha band in prefrontal, visual and primary motor cortex. The brain activity in the right hemisphere was greater than in the left hemisphere during the experiment. However, the comparison of brain response among colors combination presented no visual or significant difference. Moreover, data time analysis showed that the red-cyan-magenta scenario was the slowest one and the blue-yellow-red was the fastest, although there were no statistically significant between them.