What do you see when you rub your eyes?

[J Spade]

I see darkness, but when I rub hard I get various colors that are there as an after image when I open them again.

[latch.r.ite]

I see phosphenes. Simple as that.

I was going to say something very similar to that, but I couldn't for the life of me remember what they were actually called. I tip my hat to you.

[The Ethos]

Sure it's ok to just say phosphenes....but where's the fun in that! Isn't it neat that everyone has slightly different ones?

To share my phosphenes, there are a few....yellow/gray haze, black with purple stars, red checkerboard rotation..

But the best, and the one that always fascinated me as a kid, was the grey/yellow...god...undulating? rotating rectangles? They almost look like prism tessellations..but on top of them, there are these black line images which cycle too quickly for my eye to catch them. I always wanted to be able to draw whatever they were, but they couldn't. Apparently the shapes are fairly constant if you can catch them, and there are papers hypothesizing that primitive cave drawings are these shapes...

http://www.iol.ie/%7Egeniet/eng/hedge.htm - Shapes!

It's not called the prisoner's cinema for nothing.

Thanks for all the input everyone!

/Think you're so clever, calling them phosphenes
//Used to think it was time travel
///Still not that bright :-/

[Adamitte]

With me I first see a yellowish tunnel made of like a bunch of circles or something then after a few seconds I stop seeing the 'tunnel' and I now see this like circle that is hollow in the middle with a black filled with black the yellow will change in the circle and turn a blue colour then back to the Yellow. I don't know why I see this

[fygnuten]

Looks like this thread is dead but...
I have long been interested in this phenomenon, I get migraines, before they start, I can feel pressure of a semi-physical (and thus semi-not-physical) nature. My impression is that this is an overabundance of activity/energy in my brain. If I rub my eyes in the right way, this pressure is relieved and seems to come out in the form of very bright light that gradually dissipates into the geometrical patterns others have described. These gradually fade and I am left with images of what others might be calling "doughnuts" . I have done some checking and I am confident that for me, these shapes are my irises and pupils. When the initial light burst is less, then the pupil is larger and I can see the shapes very sharply and they correspond to the jagged shapes of my iris and pupil.
I get how phosphenes are supposed to work, basically physically triggering optic/retinal structures to react as if hit by light. And so you get vague patterns and colors. This is very different, very specific and sharp. The phosphene patterns seem to scatter upon close inspection where these eye images "hold still" for close inspection, for minutes instead of seconds. Once they dissipate, I usually have less pressure behind my eyes and I am not able to get effect to happen again.

I am curious if anyone has an explanation for how my mind/brain could possibly see clear images of my iris/pupils from rubbing my eyes with my eyelids closed. This seems impossible to me. But my "experiments/observations" have been pretty clear. Anyone?

[SuicideJunkie]

I am curious if anyone has an explanation for how my mind/brain could possibly see clear images of my iris/pupils from rubbing my eyes with my eyelids closed. This seems impossible to me. But my "experiments/observations" have been pretty clear. Anyone?

That does sound similar to the doughnuts (I'd call it a ring or just a circle - do people get the impression of 3D on these?). Do you have any particular distinguishing feature that would make it definitely your iris and not just something similarly round with semi-random features? My guess would be to do with different pressure reactions between rods and cones, which leave the center dark and a general ring of bright around it; that would follow the orientation of your eye and thus match the pupil.

The correlation with migranes is interesting.
Could it be possible to sketch the patterns you're seeing, and flash them up on a screen in different colors to see if it affects (or even effects) the pain?


For me, I don't want to press hard enough to see the rings (though I have in the past), but generally I'll have a red/green faint static pattern, with occasional green fireflies. My brain doesn't see any patterns in it.

[teelo]

I see the massive ophthalmology bill I got for eye surgery after rubbing my eyes too much as a kid.

Seriously, don't do it. The temporary joy isn't worth the horrid astigmatism later in life.

[chridd]

I get nothing. If I'm looking at a bright light, then that makes my field of vision red when I close my eyes, and rubbing them changes that between red and black due to blocking out the light, but other than that, nothing.

[flicky1991]

What do you see when you rub your eyes?
I can't tell you, but I know it's mine

...

I see lots of blurred colours.