afterimage
Sign in to saveAlso known as retina fatigue
thumb|If a viewer stares at the white dot in the center of this image for 5–60 seconds and then looks at a plain white surface, a negative afterimage will appear, showing a person's face in a more natural color scheme. This can also be achieved by the viewer closing their eyes.
Research
1,295 papers- Afterimage duration differs for migraine with or without aura.Headache · 2025
- Afterimage duration depends on how deeply invisible stimuli were suppressed.Journal of vision · 2023
- Exploring afterimage appearance with the natural color system.Vision research · 2025
- Afterimage of perceptually filled-in surface.Science (New York, N.Y.) · 2001
- Ptolemy's Optics, double-vision, and the technological afterimage.Studies in history and philosophy of science · 2022
via PubMed
~7 min read
Encyclopedic overview
7 sectionsContents
- Negative afterimages
- Positive afterimages
- On empty shape
- Gallery
- See also
- Notes
- External links
thumb|If a viewer stares at the white dot in the center of this image for 5–60 seconds and then looks at a plain white surface, a negative afterimage will appear, showing a person's face in a more natural color scheme. This can also be achieved by the viewer closing their eyes.
An afterimage, or after-image, is an image that continues to appear in the eyes after a period of exposure to the original image. An afterimage may be a normal phenomenon (physiological afterimage) or may be pathological (palinopsia). Illusory palinopsia may be a pathological exaggeration of physiological afterimages. Afterimages occur because photochemical activity in the retina continues even when the eyes are no longer experiencing the original stimulus.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “afterimage” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.