And since the superimposed objects shared the same location, the researchers were able to show that the subjects were not differentiating between patches based on where they were.

Instead, they concluded that the brain thinks of the patches as discrete, coherent objects, keeping tabs on all their properties together, and using that information to track them as they morph.

To confirm that this was the case, the researchers then tried to force people to pay attention to both of the patches at the same time.

In the previous experiment, the spin, color, and line spacing of the patches changed smoothly. But in this experiment, the researchers occasionally inserted simultaneous jumps in the gradients of all the characteristics and asked the subjects to keep track of these discontinuities.

The findings mirror those claimed by Duncan. When subjects were asked to note jumps in one characteristic of each patch, forcing them to pay attention to both patches, they were unable to do so accurately. But when asked to note two jumps for a single patch, the subjects were able to do so with great accuracy

Finding out lots of information about the same object is easy because objects are the units of visual information, the researchers say.

Holcombe, who will soon move to the University of California at San Diego to become a postdoctoral fellow, was amazed by the team's ability to experimentally disconnect object and location.

"It's a new human capability," he said. "We've discovered something humans can do that we didn't known they could do."