[baudrunner]

After switching the light in the dark room all objects appear immediately, but they disappear at once with switching off the light, i.e. if permanent influence of light on visual system is stopped, then perception by vision also is stopped, i.e. for permanent visual perception of outer world every-instant influence of light on the retina is needed, but to the question: influence – discreet or indiscreet? I’d definitely answer, that discreet.

This appears to contradict your earlier comments about persistence of images after you close your eyes. If you are in a dark room and turn on the light and then stare at a bright object and then turn off the light you will have persistence of the image in the retina, similar to staring at your computer screen then closing your eyes. You will see a residual image. The thing about keeping your eyes open when you turn off the light is that you are still mentally taking in your entire environment. When you close your eyes to conduct the experiment in a lighted room, you are mentally focussing on a specific object.

The reason this residual persistence of vision happens is related to the way that the neurons connected to your retina process images. Your retinal receptor cells are molecular in nature and the molecules that make up the cones and rods have receptor sites, which is how the neuron communicates via its axons to the dendrites of neighboring neurons across the synaptic cleft.

It turns out that a neuron's receptor sites can grow tired. If they are overstimulated, they expel the blockers and withdraw into the neuron body, actually the dendritic portion of the neuron body, to regenerate. So we can conclude that there is a time element associated with the transfer of information between neurons since they require biomolecular activity, not pure electricity, in conducting their tasks. When we close our eyes, the effect of the gross stimulation of the retinal receptors is temporarily maintained because the information is not renewed on a continual basis as it is when we have our eyes opened, when the receptors are constantly being refreshed. This is another manifestation of hysteresis, which can be defined as the inductive process that results in the existence of reality, effected right down to the level of the smallest entity in nature, the string. In effect, the retinal receptors are momentarily stimulating each other, and a very rough facsimile of the image information is being processed.

Now to the flashing light reversal. The spokes of the wheels of a wagon, or even those new fad spinning wheel covers on today's pimped out cars, can be observed to turn in the reverse direction at a speed which appears to have no relationship to the forward speed of the vehicle, which in the case of the wheel covers can even be standing still. It is easy to explain when viewed on a movie reel or television show, because of the limited number of frames that comprise the image on the screen, about thirty frames per second, just a little too fast for the eye to make out. The image appears to be continuous as in real life. But wait, is the image really continuous in real life? What about the nature of energy conservation in the body? Is there a process whereby the life force that runs through the body is actually an oscillating component, turning on and off faster than we can notice, but slow enough to conserve energy?

We have to remember that everything occurs in waves, that light is propagated in waves, that matter is composed of wavicles, that our heart beat can be observed on a monitor to exist as a waveform, and so on. So yes, I would conclude that if the proper research were conducted, we would find that the eye's retinal receptors have a refresh rate, and that the information that they receive cannot possibly be processed on a continual basis because of the amount of visual information that needs to be processed by the visual cortex, and that whereas this information is transmitted through the optical nervous system more or less in a linear, sequential manner, the information is received by the eye in a parallel, parallel manner. The biomolecular axon-dendrite communication is one that requires time, however efficient the system may be at that level, and it is this requirement for time that dictates that visual information must be received at a constant rate that requires refreshing the visual receptors fast enough for the mind to perceive continuity, but slow enough for the cortex to physically process the information and to keep the receptor sites from getting tired too fast.

Test have shown that images can be passed by the visual system without being detected if they are flashed by quick enough. It is believed that the image is received subconsciously, but in reality the refreshing of retinal receptors is not accomplished as it is in the tv set, all at once, but rather in such a way that a small fraction of receptors will still detect the image while the others are in some stage of the refresh process. But we will consciously ignore the image because not all of the receptors have the time to receive and send image information for processing when it flashes by that fast.

By the way, the image reversal phenomenon is not always observed in the reverse direction, sometimes it is forward. But it is always in slow motion, because our eye is actually taking pictures similar to the way a movie camera takes pictures and we see repeating images overlapping, images like the spokes of a wheel, at a rate which is commensurate with the average refresh rate of all the retinal receptors.

More information about receptor site regeneration can be found at the website dancesafe.com if you are interested in learning what the drug ecstacy does to your brain. Review the slide show.