why do your eyes react quickly to light but slowly to a lack of light?
In: Biology
A part of this is that the cells that detect photons have to basically recharge after each detection. So when the lights come on they all fire off and your pupils contract, and then there’s loads of light on so as they recharge there’s a lot of signal coming in that you don’t need many to be charged for them to pick up on the incoming light.
Turn the lights off and suddenly you’re in this situation where you have a very small portion of your photoreceptors charged and ready to receive/detect light. Your pupils can dilate and let more light in, which helps, but it’ll take a few minutes for enough receptors to charge up so that they can start giving you decent night vision.
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