ELi5: What are the colors and shapes I see when I’m in a 100% pitch black room with my eyes wide open?
In: Biology
I’m not an expert but here’s how I understand it. The neurons in your brain that process vision are organized in layers. The first layer is directly connected to the light sensitive cells in your eyes. The next layer searches for and detects simple lines and curves. These are fed up to the next layer that searches for more complex shapes, etc. But these layers also go down the stack, telling the below layer what it is expecting for it to find next. When the bottom layer isn’t getting input, like when you close your eyes, the rest of the layers are still working as best they can, looking for the things they are supposed to be looking for and telling the below layers what they expect them to see. There’s some noise in the system, so maybe on the shape layer one detector is going off saying “I think I’m seeing a square here, layer below me, I think you should be expecting to see lines and curves here”. That preps part of the line and curve layer to see those lines and curves, so they are more likely to see them. Then because they are already primed to see those things, the noise is enough to make those detectors think they are picking up what they are expected to be picking up.
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