When you look directly at a bright light, why does it “stain” (for lack of a better term) your vision when you look away?

Question

When you look directly at a bright light, why does it “stain” (for lack of a better term) your vision when you look away?

In: Biology

Answer 1

Photoreceptors, the things in your retina that “see” the light that enters your eyes and send it to the brain for processing, can only handle so much light before they have to “recharge”. Typically, they’re able to recharge fast enough to keep up with the light that enters them, which is why you’re not always dealing with light spots. However, when a ton of photons enter all at once, such as when you glance at the sun or peer into a lamp, your photoreceptors get overwhelmed and spend all their light-receiving molecules at once, so they take some time to recharge. The vision center of your brain isn’t able to process nothing, so it fills the gap in your vision in with the “white noise” from the photoreceptors around the empty spot, which is why you see that white-ish blob or spots.

Here’s a good post about it from a medical blog https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.huntervision.com/blog/bright-spots%3fhs_amp=true

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