Is this dress black and blue or white and gold?

It is the picture dividing the internet - is this dress white and gold or black and blue?

The simple picture has sparked a furore online, with people arguing over what colours the garment is composed of.

The original dress - to the disbelief of many looking at the picture - is suspected to be blue and black.

Many people have taken to Twitter with explanations, ranging from retinal differences, to colour perception, and even emotional trauma.

The photo was originally posted by Tumblr user Swiked, and has prompted a variety of explanations.

A post-production designer told Buzzfeed the photo appeared to be one of a white and gold dress taken with a camera phone in poor lighting, which gave the white parts a blue tone and made the gold darker.

However, others have said a quick search of the dress store's website shows the garment listed as "royal blue".

So what's going on?

Basically, people's brains colour-correct in different ways.

"People either discount the blue side, in which case they end up seeing white and gold, or discount the gold side, in which case they end up with blue and black," Bevil Conway, a neuroscientist at Wellesley College told Wired.

Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington, agreed.

"Our visual system is supposed to throw away information about the illuminant and extract information about the actual reflectance," said Jay Neitz, a neuroscientist at the University of Washington.

"But I’ve studied individual differences in colour vision for 30 years, and this is one of the biggest individual differences I’ve ever seen."

Source: Wired