(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)
Latest Answers