Time and Process in Neuropsychology

Temporal order in perception and memory has been conceived as realized within a mind/brain state or over a succession of states. Serial order might involve a concatenation of states with a blurring of the boundaries between them. However, succession alone cannot map directly to passage, i.e. perceived succession in the world does not give that in the mind, since objects and entities perish on actualization. The perception of temporal order re quires that past, nolonger existent objects recur in memory. However, to attribute serial recall to short-term, working or episodic memory merely re-states the problem without explaining it. A succession of perceptual states may be necessary for serial order but it is not a solution to the consciousness of succession. Moreover, succession is as essential to change as to stability. Object stability occurs when replacements are similar, change when recurrrences are novel. Serial order is required both to see a tree and hear a sonata. For epochal theory, events arise within non-temporal spatial wholes, with the simultaneity within a state replaced by its successor. This article argues that perception develops out of memory through the effects of sensory constraints on a memorial infrastructure. The state lapses to its precursors in the incomplete revival (decay) of perception in a series of replacements. The transition from simultaneity to succession within a state and the layering of the state in the graded revival of past states, i.e. the orderly regress from a prior object to a present image, transposed to a temporal series within the virtual present, is the basis of serial order in memory and perception.