Hallucinations from flickering lights: What happens in our brain?

Originally published by Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience - KNAW  on September 10, 2024 

 Credit: Current Biology (2024). DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2024.07.091

A new study from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience shows how flickering light can cause hallucinations in our brain: it produces "standing waves" of brain activity.

The work is published in the journal Current Biology.

You're sitting on the bus or train and close your eyes. Sunlight flickering through the trees suddenly fills your mind with kaleidoscopic hallucinatory patterns. This is what Brion Gysin experienced during his trip to Marseille in the late 1960s. The fact that flashing lights can cause hallucinations was not surprising to scientists. Stroboscopic light, familiar to many from dance floors, has been used in neuroscience research for 200 years. In 1819, neuroscientist Jan Purkinje discovered that bright full-field light flashes can make our brain spontaneously perceive geometric patterns and images.

Flickering-light stimulation in the scientific community was picked up by members of the 1960s underground—the Beat Generation—who sought mind-altering experiences and manufactured their own stroboscopes that could induce vivid hallucinations without drugs. Both scientists and artists were fascinated by how stroboscopic light creates vivid images that are not there. What is the mechanism behind flicker-induced hallucinations?

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