When you close your eyes, and push on the side of either eyelid, you see a dark spot appear in your vision on the opposite side of the area that you’re applying pressure to. Why is that?

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When you close your eyes, and push on the side of either eyelid, you see a dark spot appear in your vision on the opposite side of the area that you’re applying pressure to. Why is that?

In: Biology

6 Answers

Anonymous 0 Comments

Because your eye actually gets its input of light upside down due to the way the lens refracts the light onto your cornea. Your brain flips it right side up in “post” if you will. The spot you see is mirrored because you are getting sensory input from pressing on your eye and cornea and your brain flips that around just like the rest of your sight.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Your eye is really a reflector (a mirror) and a big area to “catch” the reflected light. Since the eye always sees light reflected, your brain always negates this reflection by “reflecting” (inverting) it again. What you see is really a mentally reflected form of the physically reflected light entering your eye.

When you apply pressure on the right side of the eye, you are stimulating the right part of your eye. Your mind thinks this stimulation must have been reflected light that originally came from the left so you “see” it on the left.

Anonymous 0 Comments

When your eyes are open and u push right on the outer corner, a black spot appears in the upper inside corner (opposite) of your eye..i 100% learned the reason for this during my ophthalmology rotation, and 100% forget the answer.

Anonymous 0 Comments

Essentially, the primary or “true” stimulus for the receptor cells in the back of your eyes is light, but they can still perceive other things as well, such as the pressure from your finger pushing on the front/side of the eye. This causes them to report a biochemical signal that is similar to how they report light to the brain, and it’s interpreted as such. This kind of “wrong” signalling can happen via other senses as well.

Edit: also, the reason the dark spot occurs opposite from where you press with your finger is because those receptor cells are in the *back* of the eye. If you push on the right side of your eye, you “see” the spot on the left side, because you are stimulating the cells on the back-right side of the eye that would normally catch light entering the eye *from the left*. The brain then translates it exactly like that.

Anonymous 0 Comments

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Anonymous 0 Comments

When your eyes are closed, is it possible to see a dark spot?