My guess is, that the moment his brain matches the perceived shape to the stored form of 8, it scrambles. That´s why he can feel the individual forms, like the

My guess is, that the moment his brain matches the perceived shape to the stored form of 8, it scrambles. That´s why he can feel the individual forms, like the circles inside the 8, just fine. Also why he can see the horizontal 8 as a mask. A mask is a distinct object, although similar in shape. Makes me wonder, if we have a stored shape for every object we've ever seen.