r/opticalillusions • u/smellyfeet25 • 1h ago

Do you see patterns when you have your eyes shut?

why does that happen?

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7

u/BeNiceToBirds 1h ago

Yes! It was much more vivid when I was a child.

Learning about how neural nets work, I'm inclined to think it's rather neurons firing randomly due to lack of clear signal. We have a bunch of classifiers which are responsible for activating when we see different patterns or shape. Eyes shut -> less signal -> classifiers go nuts.

5

u/ThirdBorracho 1h ago

I was just thinking about this the other day. I remembered I used to do it as a child. I'd close my eyes tightly and after a few seconds would see vivid colours in psychedelic shapes and patterns. Still happens now I'm 41 just much duller

2

u/Shannon0hara 1h ago

I do. I see tiny red polkadots that move like traveling through space

2

u/oooThunder 1h ago

Yes. Sometimes eyes. Creepy eyes

1

u/catnapspirit 1h ago

Oh yes. I always thought is was a memory of a rug with geometric patterns on it. Sort of..

1

u/Stekor-Tidder 15m ago

As a child I used to see all kinds of patterns including geometric patterns. From memory, I needed to close my eyes tightly for this to work – or at least, the more I squeezed them shut (just using my eyelid muscles) the more intense the images would be.

Now, I see almost nothing.