Seeing your hands with your eyes closed

[Magical Realist]

I have long been able to see my hands waved over my face with my eyes completely closed and in a dark room. The effect is striking. My hands are light blue, like ghost hands, and as I move them back and forth they seem to have more fingers than normal. This may just be an effect of the movement. Even more amazing, when I cover my eyes with an object like my pillow I still see my hands there! Here's all the information I could find on this. According to this article, there is a well known effect of cavers seeing their hands in the pitch black darkness of a cave. Interestingly they only see their own hands but not other people's hands. I've yet to hear science weigh in on this. If it's brain-based and not "new age"-based, I suspect it may point to some sort of synaptic cross talk between our visual cortex and whatever brain part causes our proprioceptive sense.

https://schwitzsplinters.blogspot.com/20...-your.html

[C C]

In the past (dark closet and eyes closed), it seemed like my hand may have been outlined by a faint glow. But now that effect is gone.

A decade or so ago, I could place my other hand over my eyes as an added barrier, and still seem to see faint movement of the hand. Now I can't.

If I substitute an elongated object for my hand (like a rolled-up newspaper), and keep my hand below visual level when waving the object, I appear to see the latter's movement. But when likewise placing the extra barrier over my eyes, I can't.

Employing an object that is not part of your body is arguably applicable to that explanation (below) that the proprioceptive sense might be feeding signals from muscle activity to the visual system.

Seeing in the Dark: Most People Can See Their Body’s Movement in the Absence of Light
https://neurosciencenews.com/neuropsycho...ement-561/

EXCERPTS: Reports of the strength of visual images varied widely among participants, but synesthetes were strikingly better at not just seeing movement, but also experiencing clear visual form. As an extreme example in the eye tracking experiment, one synesthete exhibited near perfect smooth eye movement—95 percent accuracy—as she followed her hand in darkness. In other words, she could track her hand in total darkness as well as if the lights were on.

[...] The link with synesthesia suggests that our human ability to see self-motion is based on neural connections between the senses, says Knill. “We know that sensory cross talk underlies synesthesia. But seeing color with numbers is probably just the tip of the iceberg; synesthesia may involve many areas of atypical brain processing.”

[Magical Realist]

Thanks for that article! Now I know I'm not crazy...well, not totally at least. I read in the comments that this one spelunker could see his friend's hands in front of his face. He could also see them when they were in a fist. But then when the friend said they were in front of him but really weren't, he again saw his hands! Another commenter said they could just make out the outlines of the room they were in with their eyes closed. Maybe the brain projects images into a probablistic proprioceptive space according to our expectation.

[confused2]

I was surprised to find I could see my hands in the dark (with eyes closed). I think I'd have noticed it before .. so I think it might be an effect where you can if you think you can or at least you'd dismiss it unless you were expecting it. I could also sort of see the room though feeling around the walls and corners weren't where I expected them to be. I built the house so I should know where everything is - until recently I seldom turned the lights on to move between rooms. Mrs C2 always turns the lights on so the resident rats could tell which one of it was and whether they needed to hide. I didn't really believe we had rats until I deviated from my normal route and turned a light on - to find rats scuttling about looking for a place to hide.

[Magical Realist]

I could also sort of see the room though feeling around the walls and corners weren't where I expected them to be.

One commenter noticed this:

"When I lay in bed, without being able to sleep I sometimes wave my hands in front of my closed eyes AND in almost pitch dark. Apart from the fact that hardly any photons will reach my retina, I've experienced that when I have a clear picture of my hand and then open my eyes, I can see that the location is off by several inches. (hand seemed in front of me in one place, eyes opened it turns out to be somewhere higher, lower) This displacement is far more significant on the vertical plane"

I too have noticed this discrepancy between the closed eye hand's location and the real hand's location.. It's only a couple of inches though. I notice the same effect when looking at door jambs and window frames with my eyes closed. It appears the error increases with distance..