A Question Regarding Vision

[JFischer]

New here, so howdy! Looking for an answer to a question that's bugged me for a while now.. Not sure whether anyone will be able to help in here, but I'm hoping so!

 

It all centres around this image here: http://img525.imageshack.us/img525/6300/testpngar9.png

 

This is an image I've mocked up, purely for the purpose of experimentation into this problem.. I'd ask that anybody reading please take a look at it, and take a few moments to scan your eyes back/forth across the lines.

 

You see, whenever I see yellow lines in parallel configuration.. No matter if it's on computer screen, paint or otherwise.. I get 'flashes' of red/green/rainbow lines running perpendicular to the yellow lines. For instance, in the image I've given you above, I very quickly and very faintly see three equidistant parallel lines running left-right across the vertical parallel yellow lines.

 

This doesn't happen when I look at block colours of yellow, or if the yellow lines have some other kind of detail across them / on them. Only in this kind of configuration. I noticed it when, every time I looked down / up a flight of stairs, I'd see a brief rainbow-coloured flash coming from the parallel yellow lines painted on each step.

 

It's really starting to bother me now, since nobody believes this is happening. I've asked so, so many other people about it and shown them this same diagram.. But it doesn't happen to anybody else, and nobody can offer me an explanation.

 

Hopefully one of you experts here can try and help me. Am I going insane, are my eyes a little bit strange, or perhaps you're all as confused as I am about it ? Haha. Please note, this happens both with/without my glasses on.. I have had an eye test very recently, and I do not suffer from any other colour problems. This only occurs with yellow. Blue/green/black/white/etc.. lines do not affect me in this way.

 

Any ideas? Thanks in advance for the help..

 

J

[insane_alien]

i'm sorry to say this but...

 

... your perfectly normal. it happens with some people. its not an abnormality its just the way your brain interprets it. some people get it others don't. my brother gets it, i don't.

[JFischer]

Haha don't be sorry to say it, I figured it was something normal, I just wanted to know what it was more than anything. Differences in my brain's interpretation? How so? I'm interested in learning more.

 

Perhaps it was just chance, then, that everybody I've asked (a considerable number of people, trust me) didn't have the same 'method of interpretation' as I do. Either way, as I say, I'm interested in understanding exactly why it happens .

 

J

[insane_alien]

i don't know exactly why it happens. its not my field but thats the explanation i have come across that isn't utterly wacko.

 

i get it when looking at logarithmic graph paper for some reason. but i don't get it with normal graph paper. it also tends to happen more when i'm sightly dehydrated but not always.

 

i can't say for sure.

[JFischer]

Thanks anyway, insane_alien, it's a good theory although I'm wondering if anybody else has any others? I'm just looking for some kind of name for it, or description of why it happens...

 

I'm one for finding out why things happen, and as such, I need to know the specifics of something.. If you have a link to a website or scientific journal that mentions even just possible reasons / explanations for why this happens (i.e. why my brain interprets it as red/green/rainbow flashes and others' brains dont) then I'd love to read it .

 

Cheers,

 

J