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'Closed-Eye Memory'


tmaromine

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(I don't know if it fits in this forum, but nowhere else seems fitting...)

 

Ever done something for a long time that requires a lot of visual attention ? Then later – even hours after , you close your eyes and you're thinking/seeing what you were doing earlier when you weren't even consciously thinking about it ?

 

What's the science behind that ? I've been playing a(n addicting) flash game for the last two days, and last night when I closed my eyes before sleep, I randomly saw sand falling.

 

It's as if something that requires sight and has been looked at for long periods of time is 'queued up' in your mind, and when you cut off live-sight, you start to see/imagine it. . .or something. :bounce:

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tmaromine, if the "layers of consciousness" explanation isn't meaty enough for you, you might look into the concepts of "pattern adaptation" and "motion after-effects." In short, there are issues of both memory and visual neuron exhaustion/desensitization.

 

Visual after-effects are illusions that occur after prolonged viewing of visual displays (pattern adaptation). The motion after-effect (MAE), for example, is an illusory impression of motion that is seen after viewing moving displays. After-effects have been used extensively in basic vision research as well as in clinical settings, and have been reported to be enhanced in migraine. Pattern adaptation is a cortical phenomenon that reflects both cellular mechanisms acting within individual neurons and specific interactions between groups of neurons activated by the adapting display.

Brain 2006 129(7):1833-1843; doi:10.1093/brain/awl124 (Brain Volume 129, Number 7 Pp. 1833-1843)

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