One intuitive explanation for the after image effect could be: suppose we have neurons responding to red and neurons responding to green. At neutral state both would fire at a constant rate and we don't perceive either red or green (they cancel out). When staring at a red image for a long time, the neurons responding to red would fire intensively, making us perceive red. When switched to white background, the red neurons are fatigue and leaving only the green neurons firing at a constant resting rate, making us perceive green on the white background.
shreyaskompalli
Jeffery's comment above is an intriguing thought; I didn't think about how firing neurons could essentially "cancel each other out". This does make sense though, since colors have natural opposites. When a negative of a color is suddenly switched (black to white in this case), it makes sense that the opposites of all the previous colors are also shown.
aliner-wang
I think it's soo cool how your brain tries to preserve the image it's trying to see but still gets it wrong. Makes me question how reliable my brain is at visualizing reality.
One intuitive explanation for the after image effect could be: suppose we have neurons responding to red and neurons responding to green. At neutral state both would fire at a constant rate and we don't perceive either red or green (they cancel out). When staring at a red image for a long time, the neurons responding to red would fire intensively, making us perceive red. When switched to white background, the red neurons are fatigue and leaving only the green neurons firing at a constant resting rate, making us perceive green on the white background.
Jeffery's comment above is an intriguing thought; I didn't think about how firing neurons could essentially "cancel each other out". This does make sense though, since colors have natural opposites. When a negative of a color is suddenly switched (black to white in this case), it makes sense that the opposites of all the previous colors are also shown.
I think it's soo cool how your brain tries to preserve the image it's trying to see but still gets it wrong. Makes me question how reliable my brain is at visualizing reality.