According to this
<http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080602/sc_livescience/keytoallopt\
icalillusionsdiscovered> cognitive scientist, we all "only" see
one-tenth of a second into the future every moment.

Researcher Mark Changizi of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York
says it starts with a neural lag that most everyone experiences while
awake. When light hits your retina, about one-tenth of a second goes by
before the brain translates the signal into a visual perception of the
world.

Scientists already knew about the lag, yet they have debated over
exactly how we compensate, with one school of thought proposing our
motor system somehow modifies our movements to offset the delay.

Changizi now says it's our visual system that has evolved to
compensate for neural delays, generating images of what will occur
one-tenth of a second into the future. That foresight keeps our view of
the world in the present. It gives you enough heads up to catch a fly
ball (instead of getting socked in the face) and maneuver smoothly
through a crowd. His research on this topic is detailed in the May/June
issue of the journal Cognitive Science,



[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]