Why Do I See Patterns and Lights When I Press My Eyes?

[revesz]

im wondering what these images i see are. When i close my eyes and gently push the palmes of my hand into my eyes, after about 30 seconds, i start seeing swirling lights and strings and squares, and detailed contantly shifting shapes that i can't possibly describe accuratly.

It is fascenating, it's like something you would see in an out of body experience, try it and see for yourself. its easy to do, i just push the bottom of my palm into my eye socket and i start to see matrix like effects, first everything goes yellow, then there are random flashing boxes of uncertain colour, then a matrix of digitalized geometry, laced with energy waves and worms that move and react to one another.

try it then tell me if you see anything like what i have described.
What is all this stuff, and why don't i always see it? i think it is a result of blood displacement within the visual part of the brain, just behind the eye, or mabye its just me giving myself brain-damage(hope not). so tell me what this is, or what causes it, is it something the brain creates, or is it received from the eye?

 

[metasystem]

Originally posted by revesz
...so tell me what this is, or what causes it, is it something the brain creates, or is it received from the eye?

Hi revesz,

I think that there's a combination of two things possibly happening.

I think in part, the phenomenon you're describing is a form of *photopsia* caused by stimulation of retinal receptor cells by pressure from the vitreous gel. If you close your eye and push your eyeball firmly from the outer corner, you can elicit a luminous photopsia more lucidly... that's a direct stimulation of the retinal receptor cells. (Just don't push too firmly...)

But the second thing happening is that the both the receptor cells and the cells of the visual cortex can experience random noise (i.e. neuronal firing) that occurs spontaneously in the absence of visual stimuli.

So it might be from both the brain and the eye... but having said that, the retina is actually a part of the brain -- the receptors (rods and cones) are histologically neuronal cells, and so you could think of them as an extension of the visual cortex, connected to the brain by long afferent axons (i.e. the optic nerve).


Regards,
metasystem

 

[revesz]

it doesn't look like random noise, it looks more like a fractal image, that a computer might have created. i have never heard reference to this anywhere before, but i find it usefull in understanding how the brain works, its as if i can see an ever changing display of light, its beautiful, i think the effect would be mostly from signals sent into the visual cortex, by the receptors, mabye it works the way nerves work, and the pressure creates a response, exept that the brain interprets this signal differently. so i would expect the same effect to be experienced if someone were haveing brain surgery or having some trauma to the brain, this may also be inducable with drugs, or meditation.