Fig. 2

Diagrams showing total synaptic delay and merging of the frames of percepts. a In vivo perception time can be determined by the delay along the path of light inside the eyeball and the orders of neurons through which the stimulus travels to reach the neuronal orders in the visual cortex. Note that there is a minimum of five synaptic delay periods before the stimulus reaches the inter-postsynaptic functional LINK at the visual cortical neuronal orders. The five synapses will contribute to a delay of 5–10 ms. The lengths of nearly five cm each of the ganglion cell and the lateral geniculate neuronal (LGN) axons will add another 1 ms delay. The time required for the light to travel from the corneal surface to the pigment epithelium of the retina is taken as negligible. In summary, we expect a total delay ranging from 6–11 ms. C cornea; L lens; R retina [has layers 1, 2, 3 (shown in the inset) and the cell body of the layer 4]; 1 pigment epithelium; 2 rods and cones; 3 bipolar cell; 4 ganglion cell axon (forms optic nerve); 5 lateral geniculate neuronal (LGN) axon. B and D Abutting postsynapses (dendritic spines) of the neurons in the visual cortex, where inter-postsynaptic functional LINK forms; W Oscillating potentials with its horizontal component contributed by the lateral spread of activity through the inter-postsynaptic functional LINK. f flicker fusion frequency. N1 and N2 are visual cortical neurons of the dendritic spines to which LGN terminals synapse. b A graphical representation showing temporally arriving stimuli above the flicker fusion frequency leading to the continuity in the percept. Stimulus 1 reaching the retina arrive at the neuronal location where the percept occurs after a delay sd which represents the synaptic delay. The units of perception continue to form and overlap (in red triangle) with the units of perception from the Stimulus 2 that arrives at the retina after a period of (1/flicker fusion frequency) seconds after the arrival of Stimulus 1. For the percept to become homogenous, the units of perception formed from the Stimulus 1 and Stimulus 2 should be capable of entangling with each other. A bidirectional overlapping symmetric process in the formation of units of perception is expected to allow maintaining homogeneity at the overlapping area (marked in red) between the percepts. f flicker fusion frequency, sd synaptic delay