Here’s what’s happening in plain language: when you stare at your own face in low light for a long time you reduce the amount of new visual information hitting your eyes. A few related processes then conspire to make your reflection look odd.
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Troxler fading / sensory adaptation. Neurons that respond to unchanging stimuli start to reduce their firing. Stable parts of the scene (like the outline of your face) can fade or blur, while small differences get exaggerated.
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Suppressed micro-saccades. Normally your eyes make tiny, involuntary movements that refresh the image on your retina. When you fix your gaze for a long time those movements can diminish, so the image “stabilises” and the brain fills in missing details.
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Face perception and pareidolia. Your brain is wired to recognise faces quickly. When information becomes ambiguous it starts guessing — sometimes those guesses make your face look warped, aged, or like someone else entirely.
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Top-down effects (expectation and fear). If you expect something scary to happen, your brain biases ambiguous input toward that interpretation, making distortions feel more dramatic or threatening.
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Visual release hallucinations (rare). In extreme sensory deprivation or certain medical conditions people can experience actual simple hallucinations; for most people the mirror effect is a transient illusion, not a persistent hallucination.
If you want to test it safely: try a brief experiment — dim the room, focus on the tip of your nose for 30–60 seconds, then look away. You may see distortions for a few seconds. If the experience makes you anxious, stop immediately. If someone regularly sees disturbing hallucinations outside of intentional mirror-gazing, it’s worth checking in with a health professional.
Fun fact: psychologists have used mirror-gazing to study perception and self-image because it highlights how active and interpretive vision really is — your brain is always doing the hard work, even for something as familiar as your own face.
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