I read an article [in Scientific American] a number of years ago, many years ago, that made me question this too easy interpretation, and this in turn led me down a pathway that I am still exploring in various forms. Which is a speculation about a theoretical cache in the brain, somewhere that retains what you have seen in great detail, not a retinal blurry image that fades, but everything in great detail?

And, this article was written by a scientist in Australia back in the mid '70s, John Ross, I think his name was. And, he was able to present a series of random dots to the left eye, and a series of other random dots to the right eye, and keep these separate, as you would in a stereopticon. You know, those old, nineteenth century viewers. And, if nothing else changed, the person who was experiencing this, if asked would say, well I just see a bunch of random dots happening. What he then would do… would introduce for a few milliseconds, a tiny amount of time, in one of the eyes, he would introduce a pattern. And, the pattern would be apparently, as if a hole was dug in these random dots, an offset of the dots that you would imagine it's like you were looking into a box within the pattern, like we'd punched a hole and made some of the dots further back. If you just looked at it with one eye, you would not have seen any of this, because to see depth you need two eyes, stereovision. So, if he introduced this pattern for a few milliseconds and then asked the person, 'What did you see?' They would say, 'Nothing, just the same.' Then, if he introduced the corresponding dimensional pattern in the right eye, just for a few milliseconds, 'what did you see?' 'Well, yes, interesting, for a tiny brief moment, I saw, it was as if there was a hole in the pattern, like a box hole, square, cut in the pattern.' 'Oh, that's very interesting, because that's correct.'

Then, he was able to slide the time frame of one of the eyes, and delay it by a number of milliseconds. And, the person would now be asked: hit this button when you see the box. And, so the experiment would run, the person would see the box and hit it. The interesting thing was that he or she would see the illusion when the second box was displayed, not when the first happened. That you would see the first, but be unaware of it, you would only see the illusion when the corresponding illusion happened in the other eye. So, out of these hundreds of thousands of random dots, the information was somehow stored in great detail somewhere, enough so that by the time the corresponding shoe, this other, the right information appeared later, you saw the illusion. And, he was able then to extend it further, and sure enough, the illusion happened further. And, then there became a part where the illusion was no longer seen. The delay was so great that the mind gave up, and he was then able to work out, what was the length of this delay, because if they were presented at the same time, if you delayed one, the illusion would not be seen until this was seen, even though this had long gone, it was still stored somewhere. And, delay it further and yes, I still see it. I still see it, and now I don't see it. So he was able to quantify where this cliff happened. And it turned out to be around fifty milliseconds, but he was able to quantify it. And, it varied slightly from person to person, some people the delay was shorter, others it was slightly longer, but the article hypothesised that there was not a vague impression of a frame, but the frame itself is stored in great perfect detail for a limited period of time, and that's how in his experiment we would see three dimensions at the point where both images were able to be compared.