The brain creates the illusion of movies through cognitive processing rather than retinal afterimages

Cinema relies on the phi phenomenon and beta movement to simulate motion, contradicting the common myth that the eye simply retains images between frames. While the 19th-century 'persistence of vision' theory suggested that retinal afterimages bridge the gaps of darkness, Max Wertheimer's 1912 experiments with a tachistoscope proved that the brain actively synthesizes separate images into a single continuous path.