Music Influences On Phosphenes

Hello guys! Read this if you want, idc, it's not important to the article though. I'm still in school and don't currently have a job, but I'm REALLY obsessed with neuroscience and want to be a neuroscientist when I can. I occasionally do research on it and draft worksheets for myself to research and figure out, and today I was bored and came up with this experiment and did it.

This should be taken with a grain of salt because

1. I still don't know much about neuroscience and still am in school

2. I did the best I could, although some details have been left out or forgotten about, and this is moreso for fun so I'm not entirely serious about this

Additionally, no research has been done for this, but if there's another school student out there who's struggling with research and my experiment report somehow helps them, then I'm very glad and that is half the reason why I'm posting this anyways :) (Other half is cuz I just wanna assert dominance >:3 I don't know if this has been done before but from some very quick searching I didn't see anything like it, but I'm just still proud of this)

Music Influences On Phosphenes

7/8/2025

@z0mb0_5h4rk1e on Spacehey

(Can use or repost for any purpose just please credit)

What are phosphenes?

They are the hallucinations that appear when pressure is applied on your eyes when closed.

Disclaimer

This is not a professional report nor am I a professional, this was just an experiment done for fun and to see what would happen.

Objective

To see if music of different genres influence phosphenes.

Hypothesis

I don't think much will actually happen, if there are any differences then they may only be normal variables.

Steps

-I will lay down in my bed, play the song and apply pressure to my eyelids.

-I will listen to the song for 1 minute and use an alarm to know when to stop.

-I will record what I remember seeing during that 1 minute.

Chosen Songs

1. Girlfriend - Avril Lavigne (Pop Punk)

2. I-E-A-I-A-I-O - System Of A Down (Metal)

3. Sacrifice - Lil Texas (Hardcore)

4. Alone - Alan Walker (Pop EDM)

5. Less Than Three - Disko Warp (Happy Hardcore)

6. Flowers - Miley Cyrus (Pop, I really hate this song so that's why I added it, no hate to anyone who does like it)

Girlfriend

-I saw a very blurry blue face

-Some blue moving lips then appeared

-It then morphed into a tunnel

-It all went into a red void with yellow squares

-I saw something which looked like a ghost in the corner

I-E-A-I-A-I-O

-There were shadow figures

-It then went dark

-Some patterns started to form but they didn't take up the entirety of my vision

-A bunch of rusty nuts appeared

-Then there was a demonic shadow creature which leaped and attacked me

Sacrifice

-I saw a road, but it was fuzzy and kept fading in and out

-There were several eyes slowly opening and closing

-There was a flower thing which had spat out a spider

-There was a circle of eyes, not looking at me though

-The circle of eyes became more and more red

Alone

-My vision was split into 2 sides

-One had a spec of glowing light 

-The other was being consumed by a bunch of green and yellow dots

-Then it turned into Minecraft, but all the blocks were peach coloured 

-The block textures then turned into a face screaming, but not scary screaming

-Then there was a single cube that was being spun around and shrinking

Less Than Three

-There was a blue and yellow checkered tunnel

-There was a foot touching a CD in black and white outlines

-The foot raised out of the water and it was a girl in a sun hat

-Then the same nuts mentioned before had appeared, which morphed into a bunch of holes

-The holes remained, but they were in the silhouette of a walking echidna

Flowers

-Unlike the others, it went straight to patterns

-Firstly, the colours were extremely vibrant and fast moving, which was hurting my eyes even after reducing the pressure on them (which had remained consistent)

-I've noticed that there were a lot of falling things and slow moving shapes across my vision among the patterns

-There was a lot going on and it was so intense that I started feeling stressed, but I still did the whole minute

Reflection

I had done the experiment out of bordem, and I didn't expect much results, but I thought wrong. My hypothesis had turned out to be entirely wrong, the more intense songs had shadow figures and scary elements appear, meanwhile the more chill tracks were okay and more normal. I'm unsure of what could've been going on with the song Flowers, maybe it's just because of how much I hate the song, but either way, this was a very fun experiment to do and I've actually learnt a bit from this as well!