Anyone else seem like objects in dimly lit rooms seem to mov

Post Reply New Topic

When I look around in a dimly lit room it appears like the curtains or the lamp or other objects are slightly moving. Anyone else experience this? I don't know if it is just my eyes going out of focus. It only happens in a dimly light environment.

Yes, particularly in my peripheral vision, I get this a lot. I also have quite prominent "visual snow" and get visual migraine kind of hallucinations quite a bit (I get full-on migraines, too, but only very rarely). Those are also much more noticeable in dim light. I've always thought of it as my brain trying to find pattern within "background noise" in my visual circuits (the "visual snow" being the visualisation of the "background noise", presumably). Having my eyes focused on particular object of attention for too long, brings it out (for example, when hyper-focused on my PC monitor or reading a book.)

There are well-known visual effects from dim lighting that almost anyone can experience. For example, the game "Bloody Mary" where one stares at one's own reflection in a mirror in dim lighting, after a while seeing incredible distortions of the face, has been studied and hypothesised to involve the same processes as many optical illusions.