"On a different time scale, a perceptual mechanism seems to exist that integrates separate successive events into a unit or perceptual gestalt (see Poppel 2009). We do not just perceive individual events in isolation, but automatically integrate them into perceptual units with a duration of approximately 2–3 s (Fraisse 1984; Poppel 1997). For example, while listening to a metronome at a moderate speed, we do not hear a train of individual beats, but automatically form perceptual units, such as 1–2–3, 1–2–3, etc. These are mental constructs—physically speaking, they do not exist. The duration of this temporal integration mechanism, referred to as the subjective present, seems to be limited to 2–3 s (Szelag et al. 1996; Wittmann & Poppel 2000)."

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"The notion that perception and motor behaviour are processed in discrete windows or processing epochs has been conceptualized for some time (White 1963; Poppel 1970; Dehaene 1993; VanRullen & Koch 2003; Fingelkurts & Fingelkurts 2006). These temporal integration units fuse successive events into a unitary experience, ‘snapshots of experience’ or ‘psychological presents’ (Blumenthal 1977), which are characterized by co-temporality, meaning that
events within this time zone have no temporal relationship (Ruhnau 1995). For example, the perception of temporal order of short stimuli in different modalities is only possible if the individual events are separated by at least 20–60 ms (Exner 1875; Hirsh & Sherrick 1961; Kanabus et al. 2002; Fink et al. 2006). f the two events are separated by smaller intervals, an observer is not able to tell which of the two appeared first."

"By a time capsule, I mean any fixed pattern that creates or encodes the appearance of motion, change or history....Let me now attempt a more formal definition: Any static configuration that appears to contains mutually consistent records of processes that took place in a past in accordance with certain laws may be called a time capsule."