ABSTRACT
Vision takes time to happen and what vision happens depends on time. Where timing is critical, visual tasks must allow for the delay between when a stimulus occurs and when it produces a sensory effect. Furthermore, vision must be allowed to operate over a certain time because very small periods of time are unlikely to contain sufficient photons to activate a significant number of receptors. To produce a sensory effect, the visual system integrates over time whatever stimulation it receives. Nonlinearity of this integration produces transient effects that hold clues to the processes that bridge the physical and visual realms. Nondiscreteness of this integration results in temporal carry-over which creates the continuity of visual experience characterized by sustained effects. Depending on the application, all three temporal aspects of visual information processing need to be considered to understand what is seen and to optimize behavior.
