(Eli5) What are those colors you see when you close your eyes in the dark?
In: Biology
In the back of your eyeball, you have millions of little photo-receptor cells called “rods and cones”. The rods see shades only, no color, and respond to low light conditions (which is why it’s difficult to discern colors in low light), the cones are responsible for color and for acuity (sharpness) of vision, but need more light to function. When you close your eyes, the cones are still getting stimulated by your vision center in the brain, TRYING to detect color, but there is nothing to detect. So that results in what is essentially “noise” in your optic nerve. Here is a graphic depiction of the distribution of the three types of cones humans have; red, green and blue (RGB). Look sort of familiar? This is likely the basis of the patters you perceive when you close your eyes, but the nerves are randomly firing, so it appears to ‘swirl” too.
[https://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/montag/vandplite/images/chapter_9/mosaic.gif](https://www.cis.rit.edu/people/faculty/montag/vandplite/images/chapter_9/mosaic.gif)
Most people see splashes of colors and flashes of light on a not-quite-jet-black background when their eyes are closed. It’s a phenomenon called phosphene. Not an expert but I believe it’s basically our brain and eyes don’t shut off when we close our eyes, so your visual system is still active. Fun fact, the name for the ‘not quiet jet black’ colour we see is Eigengrau.
You mean the blue and red and purpley Rorsach test looking things?
And what makes them swirl around in different, but repeating patterns?
Simply put, Eigengrau (German for “intrinsic grey”), not black, is what we see.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eigengrau
You live in a simulation. These, and other effects (seeing stars when knocked in head, seeing “white snow” in the dark etc) are artifacts caused by the faulty simulation. It’s also reported that people that were participants of government mind-control/remote viewing projects (yes, they actually existed and or still exist) report these type of visual artifacts much more often than normal.
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