Flicker is a visible fading between cycles displayed on video displays, especially the refresh interval on cathode ray tube (CRT) based computer screens. Flicker occurs on CRTs when they are driven at a low refresh rate, allowing the brightness to drop for time intervals sufficiently long to be noticed by a human eye – see persistence of vision and flicker fusion threshold. For most devices, the screen's phosphors quickly lose their excitation between sweeps of the electron gun, and the afterglow is unable to fill such gaps – see phosphor persistence. A similar effect occurs in PDPs during their refresh cycles.