What causes those weird colorful patterns when you rub your eyes?
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Normally, cells in your eye respond to different types of light, allowing you to see colors, shapes, shadows, etc.
The “weird colorful patterns” are what most scientists in the eye and neurology fields have called **phosphenes.** Basically, any kaleidoscope-like patterns, stars, lines, and swirls have all been categorized under the term **phosphene.**
The thought is that stimulation of the cells in the eyes from anything that is ***not light,*** like rubbing your eyes in this example, can stimulate the cells just enough to “burst” and activate for a brief amount of time. This is why you typically cannot sustain the image or focus on it because you are not truly “looking” at something or taking in light from a source.
Similar “fake activation” of these cells has been seen with sneezing and coughing (increased eye pressure), physical trauma (similar to direct rubbing), migraines/headaches (thought to have electrical influence), and even among astronauts in outer space (increased radiation).
As you can tell, there are a lot of non-specific causes and non-specific “visuals” people report. What the “visual” appears to be is completely subjective to the person and typically hard to describe as they are not seen for much time.
You can think of the cells in your eye as runners ready at the beginning of a racetrack, anxious to sprint at the sound of the starter pistol (light), but then someone in the audience opens a can of soda and the loud noise tricks them into a false running start (phosphene).
I had never been curious enough prior to this post, but upon consulting my colleague Google it appears the word **phosphene** has Greek roots in “phos” (light) and “phainein” (to show).
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