An interesting finding: According to a recent Huffington Post article, “Depression Literally Colors the Way We See the World,” feeling states affect our capacity to perceive color tones. This article was based upon a scientific study that was published recently in the journal Psychological Science entitled “Sadness Impairs Color Perception.”

As supportive anecdotal evidence, an aesthetically sophisticated, cyclothymic patient has told me for years that when depressed, she sees the world “only in black and white.” This recent study adds data to the growing body of evidence that mood changes affect how our brain perceives even the physical world around us.

-Mark Levy MD