Retinal Persistence

When I looked up this word, it wasn't the easiest thing to understand. It seems that many scientists and psychologists have dubunked this theory and now believe in others. What I assume the term means is that our brain fills in the blank spots between frames of an animation, which gives us the perception of motion. The first thing that I think of when I read about this is gestalt. In gestalt, which would most likely take place on a still image, our mind is able to fill in certain parts of an image. For example, if you have type, if part of a letter is cropped off the page, or is obscured by another image, we still know what that letter is, since our brains fill in that information for us. After looking this up to make sure my terminology was correct, this type of gestalt is consiered "closure." This would be similar to retinal persistence, when the brain fills in the gaps in time of an animation.