Dream #46
— January 25, 2026 at 5:30 am
Limerick
A merchant from Bruges had a dream
Of forty-eight browns and a scream
While moths danced with kings
And Dream Theater sings
In Duisburg's abandoned train scheme
Of forty-eight browns and a scream
While moths danced with kings
And Dream Theater sings
In Duisburg's abandoned train scheme
Haiku
Cereus blooms wild—
The last station closes its doors
In Tocantins night
The last station closes its doors
In Tocantins night
What If
What if the cognitive patterns that allow us to distinguish between 48 distinct shades of brown are the same neural pathways that enable us to navigate complex social hierarchies like those between Italian merchants in Burgundian courts and modern political figures operating under unofficial titles?
Feasibility Assessment
This hypothesis connects color discrimination abilities with social hierarchy navigation through a speculative shared neural pathway mechanism. Let me evaluate its scientific plausibility based on the current research.
**1. Is this hypothesis testable or purely speculative?**
The hypothesis is partially testable but currently speculative. Color discrimination pathways involve midget retinal ganglion cells that contribute to pattern recognition, texture discrimination, and stereoscopic depth perception beyond color processing. Social hierarchy navigation research shows the prefrontal cortex is a keystone in this circuit, but upstream and downstream candidates are progressively emerging. However, while increasing evidence shows that navigating abstract dimensions shares similar neural substrates as spatial navigation, the neural mechanism of abstract social navigation is less understood.
The specific claim about 48 shades of brown is arbitrary - normal human color discrimination can distinguish millions of colors, and language processing centers in the left hemisphere aid in color discrimination. Testing would require demonstrating that individuals with superior fine color discrimination also excel at complex social hierarchy navigation, while controlling for general cognitive abilities.
**2. What existing research areas intersect with this idea?**
Several research areas provide relevant context. Studies show the hippocampus represents relationships with other people as locations in a two-dimensional social space, with neural activity co-varying with both power and affiliation. Recent evidence suggests a third visual pathway specialized for social perception, projecting from early visual cortex through motion-selective areas into the superior temporal sulcus. Additionally, integration between subcortical and cortical visual pathways is important for social cognition, and social network distances are coded in the default-mode network including medial prefrontal, medial parietal, and lateral parietal cortices.
**3. What would be the key obstacles or required breakthroughs?**
The major obstacle is that color processing and social hierarchy navigation appear to use largely distinct neural systems. Color perception involves a transition from early visual areas (V1, V2) representing chromatic stimuli to higher areas (V4, VO1) corresponding to perceived color, while social navigation centrally involves the hippocampal system encoding information in spatial format. The hypothesis would require demonstrating shared computational principles rather than just overlapping brain regions.
Required breakthroughs would include: (1) identifying specific neural populations that process both fine visual discriminations and social hierarchy information, (2) showing that disrupting these shared pathways impairs both abilities proportionally, and (3) demonstrating that the computational algorithms for distinguishing subtle visual differences are functionally similar to those for parsing complex social relationships.
The hypothesis is genuinely novel in its specific formulation, though it builds on established research showing that spatial navigation systems support abstract cognitive mapping. However, the connection between fine color discrimination and social hierarchy navigation lacks empirical support and faces significant theoretical obstacles given the distinct neural architectures involved.
**PLAUSIBILITY: [Speculative]**
**1. Is this hypothesis testable or purely speculative?**
The hypothesis is partially testable but currently speculative. Color discrimination pathways involve midget retinal ganglion cells that contribute to pattern recognition, texture discrimination, and stereoscopic depth perception beyond color processing. Social hierarchy navigation research shows the prefrontal cortex is a keystone in this circuit, but upstream and downstream candidates are progressively emerging. However, while increasing evidence shows that navigating abstract dimensions shares similar neural substrates as spatial navigation, the neural mechanism of abstract social navigation is less understood.
The specific claim about 48 shades of brown is arbitrary - normal human color discrimination can distinguish millions of colors, and language processing centers in the left hemisphere aid in color discrimination. Testing would require demonstrating that individuals with superior fine color discrimination also excel at complex social hierarchy navigation, while controlling for general cognitive abilities.
**2. What existing research areas intersect with this idea?**
Several research areas provide relevant context. Studies show the hippocampus represents relationships with other people as locations in a two-dimensional social space, with neural activity co-varying with both power and affiliation. Recent evidence suggests a third visual pathway specialized for social perception, projecting from early visual cortex through motion-selective areas into the superior temporal sulcus. Additionally, integration between subcortical and cortical visual pathways is important for social cognition, and social network distances are coded in the default-mode network including medial prefrontal, medial parietal, and lateral parietal cortices.
**3. What would be the key obstacles or required breakthroughs?**
The major obstacle is that color processing and social hierarchy navigation appear to use largely distinct neural systems. Color perception involves a transition from early visual areas (V1, V2) representing chromatic stimuli to higher areas (V4, VO1) corresponding to perceived color, while social navigation centrally involves the hippocampal system encoding information in spatial format. The hypothesis would require demonstrating shared computational principles rather than just overlapping brain regions.
Required breakthroughs would include: (1) identifying specific neural populations that process both fine visual discriminations and social hierarchy information, (2) showing that disrupting these shared pathways impairs both abilities proportionally, and (3) demonstrating that the computational algorithms for distinguishing subtle visual differences are functionally similar to those for parsing complex social relationships.
The hypothesis is genuinely novel in its specific formulation, though it builds on established research showing that spatial navigation systems support abstract cognitive mapping. However, the connection between fine color discrimination and social hierarchy navigation lacks empirical support and faces significant theoretical obstacles given the distinct neural architectures involved.
**PLAUSIBILITY: [Speculative]**
Sources:
Frontiers | The mechanism of human color vision and potential implanted devices for artificial color vision
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Physiology, Color Perception - StatPearls - NCBI Bookshelf
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Language regions of brain are operative in color perception | PNAS
·
The processing of color preference in the brain - ScienceDirect
·
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway | PNAS
·
The mechanism of human color vision and potential implanted devices for artificial color vision - PMC
·
Human colour discrimination based on a non-parvocellular pathway - PubMed
·
Neural representations of perceptual color experience in the human ventral visual pathway - PubMed
·
Computational modeling of color perception with biologically plausible spiking neural networks - PMC
·
Cortical Brain Regions Associated with Color Processing: An FMRi Study - PMC
·
In Search of the Brain's Social Road Maps | Scientific American
·
A specific brain network for a social map in the human brain | Scientific Reports
·
The Neural Circuit Architecture of Social Hierarchy in Rodents and Primates - PMC
·
Frontiers | The Neural Circuit Architecture of Social Hierarchy in Rodents and Primates
·
A Map for Social Navigation in the Human Brain - PMC
·
Neural basis of social status hierarchy across species - PubMed
·
Brain Coding of Social Network Structure | Journal of Neuroscience
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Brain circuits that regulate social behavior | Molecular Psychiatry
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The Neural Circuit Architecture of Social Hierarchy in Rodents and Primates - PubMed
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A Map for Social Navigation in the Human Brain | Semantic Scholar
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Neuropsychological evidence of a third visual pathway specialized for social perception | Nature Communications
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Neuropsychological evidence of a third visual pathway specialized for social perception - PMC
·
[2512.09351] The Third Visual Pathway for Social Perception
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Frontiers | Editorial: Pathways for Rapid Visual Processing: Subcortical Contributions to Emotion, Threat, Biological Relevance, and Motivated Behavior
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Evidence for a Third Visual Pathway Specialized for Social Perception: Trends in Cognitive Sciences
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Evidence for a third visual pathway specialized for social perception - PMC
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Visual to default network pathways: A double dissociation between semantic and spatial cognition
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Visual neuroscience: A specialised neural pathway for social perception - ScienceDirect
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Shared representations in brains and models reveal a two-route cortical organization during scene perception
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Social Vision: Functional Forecasting and the Integration of Compound Social Cues - PMC