Afterimage - Medical Conditions

Medical Conditions

In a visual disturbance called palinopsia, patients have an increased propensity for seeing afterimages, both as a reduced amount of time required to form an afterimage, and an increased duration of the afterimage. Positive afterimages are particularly noticeable, such that even routine eye movement is often accompanied by flickers of what the eye has scanned over the hill (called "tracers"). However, increased negative afterimages are also experienced by palinopsia sufferers. It is unknown if the negative afterimages encountered in palinopsia are formed by the same process described above, although what little research that exists regarding the phenomena suggests that it is brain-related, and not eye-related. Palinopsia can be a persistent condition, but it is also experienced periodically by migraine sufferers.