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Why do nosotros see colors with our eyes closed?

Those mysterious blobs and patterns that bedazzle the backs of your eyelids are no illusion. What y'all see is existent lite — and it's coming from inside your optics.

• Dec 29, 2014

Phosphenes can appear every bit geometric patterns every bit well as random spots of colour. This is an artist's rendition of what they look like. [Image Credit: Wikimedia Commons user Al2]

As you settle into bed at night, shut your eyes and brainstorm to doze off, you may detect the colorful light testify happening within your eyelids. When you rub the sleep from your weary eyes, the lights suddenly intensify and bursts of brilliant colors appear all across your field of vision. A few seconds later, the colors settle down again. While you might appreciate the bedtime entertainment, in the dorsum of your drowsy heed you've probably wondered what the heck you're fifty-fifty seeing.

These foreign blobs you see accept a name; they're chosen "phosphenes," and researchers believe that actual light may play a part. Simply not ordinary light — this light comes from inside your eyes. In the aforementioned way that fireflies and deep-sea creatures can glow, cells within our optics emit biophotons, or biologically produced light particles.

"We see biophotonic calorie-free inside our eyes in the same way we see photons from external light," said István Bókkon, a Hungarian neuroscientist who works at the Vision Enquiry Institute in Lowell, Massachusetts.

Biophotons exist in your eyes because your atoms constantly emit and absorb tiny particles of light, or photons. This photon exchange is just a role of normal cellular function. Your eyes can't tell the divergence betwixt photons from outside lite and the biophotons emitted by your own atoms. Either fashion, your optic nerve simply relays these lite signals to the brain, which must then decide if it accurately represents the existent world around yous, or if it's just a phosphene.

Our eyes actually produce far more biophotons than we end upwards seeing every bit phosphenes. "When y'all rub your optics, this generates biophotons in many parts of the eyes," explained Bókkon. "But they are by and large absorbed locally." Well-nigh all of the biophotons you lot see are the ones both emitted and absorbed by atoms in the retina — the part of your middle responsible for detecting light.

Within the retina, millions of tiny cells chosen rods and cones collect light and convert information technology into electrical signals. These signals travel through the optic nerve to a part of the brain chosen the visual cortex. Here, the brain reconstructs an epitome using the information received from the eyes. When a reconstructed image looks similar nonsense, the brain is quick to label the epitome as unreal, or a phosphene.

Merely that information doesn't always come from your retinas. According to Bókkon, phosphenes can originate in various other parts of the visual system, as well. Research has shown that direct electrical and magnetic stimulation of the brain can trigger phosphenes, and Bókkon hopes to shortly be able to prove that biophotons are responsible for these phosphenes also.

Depending on where a phosphene originates, it can take on a diverseness of shapes, patterns and colors. Dissimilar atoms and molecules emit photons of unlike wavelengths, which is why nosotros run across dissimilar colors. A phosphene with an orderly geometric pattern like a checkerboard may have originated in a section of the retina where millions of low-cal-collecting cells are arranged in a similarly organized design. Researchers accept also found that different areas of the encephalon's visual cortex create sure specific shapes of phosphenes.

In the 1950s, the German researcher Max Knoll at the Technische Universität in Munich came upwardly with a nomenclature scheme for phosphene shapes. He studied phosphenes in over a chiliad volunteers and came upward with xv categories, including triangles, stars, spirals, spots and amorphous blobs. He discovered that by prodding different areas of the visual cortex with an electrode device, he was consistently able to induce the same kinds of phosphenes.

In the lab, scientists generally use electric probes and fancy magnetic machines to make people come across phosphenes. But the phosphenes nosotros mostly see every day are not related to any type of electromagnetic stimulation. Instead, most phosphenes occur spontaneously when the atoms in our eyes commutation their biophotons. Yous can likewise trigger phosphenes yourself past applying pressure to your eyes — but be careful trying this at home!

The most mutual non-spontaneous phosphenes are pressure phosphenes, similar the ones you see when yous rub your eyes. Co-ordinate to Bókkon, any type of force per unit area on the optics can crusade them to emit an "excess of biophotons" that create intense visuals. Sneezing really hard, getting whacked in the head, and continuing upwards too fast (causing a drop in blood pressure) are likewise ways to trigger pressure phosphenes.

The only people who never see phosphenes are people who have been blind since birth. Only people who lose their vision due to illnesses or injuries commonly don't lose all visual functions. Considering phosphenes tin can originate in unlike parts of the visual system, "theoretically, all blind people who could previously encounter can retain the power to see phosphenes," explained Bókkon.

Researchers take as well been studying ways to trigger phosphenes in bullheaded patients to try and effigy out a style to potentially restore their vision. If scientists can utilize technology to make the bullheaded run across phosphenes, mayhap they tin use similar applied science brand them meet existent images.

So next fourth dimension you lot crawl into bed, close your eyes and admire the phosphenes. Now that you can capeesh the visual furnishings in a whole new way, yous can only lay back and enjoy the show.

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Source: https://scienceline.org/2014/12/why-do-we-see-colors-with-our-eyes-closed/

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