It's a really intriguing question to ponder, how does time and space affect memory? And in fact, the converse, how does memory affect our perception of time and space?

I won't get all 'quantum theory' here, but I found this very interesting article by neuroscientist Andre Fenton, that I have shortened and summarized here.

Being an artist, the concept of perception is tied closely to my craft. I'm free to 'play' with perceptions as an artist, and so the concept of how science says that our perception is affected, is very intriguing.

Here's what the latest studies in neuro-science show:

The representations that we build of time and space in the brain, form the framework in which we experience the world, so that we can collect from the experiences, the memories that we keep.

And at the very same time, those memories that we keep, they are modifying - they are changing the very substance of that framework, so that in the future, our next experiences are predicated on that modified framework.

There's a fundamental interaction between our past experiences, and how we approach the world to collect new experiences, that we then turn into memories.

So what these studies are really telling us, is that we can't fully trust our memory.

So if you have a group of people that have deep beliefs and feel their memories are noble and true, they will react very differently than another set of people who recognize their memories are not likely entirely accurate. Cognitive psychologists knew long ago that mindset was really crucial to not only how we perceive the world, but how we remember things from the world.

Here's a concrete example; when you remember something, there's actually an interaction of three crucial things; what you know - the mindset you came to make "memories" from - and the cues that are used for the recollection. These three 'components' are fundamentally and intimately intertwined, you can't recollect or make a memory, without all three things.

So the fundamental fact is that when we experience the world, when we have thoughts, we are using our brains. And the brain is a self organizing system. Through its own use it gets modified. (same as algorithms)

We are not simply reproducing what it is that we had experienced. We are reconstructing, we are constantly building a new experience.

At the level of perception, we can all experience what would appear to be the same thing. For example, look out the window and down the street. Everyone will focus their attention on different aspects of what's available for them to recollect. So naturally, we 'perceive' that we have a recording of the actual events as they happenedâ¦

When we retell the stories and recount them, we reconstruct those events from what we "remember" â¦. Which is kind of scary based on my 'memory' these days! Those memories are fragments, and we build stories within our mindset, and the stories are triggered by the cues that we're using to retell those stories.

At the end of the day, many of us seek to come to an understanding of 'the truth', something that we can all agree on and recognize as being meaningful and honest and universal. How do you accomplish that? Well, by recognizing that we all have access to that truth, and that we all have distorted perceptions, and we will later have a distorted understanding and recollection of the perception called memory.

So, if we are to understand and believe this 'process' of memory, it demands that we act in the world with certain sense of humility and empathy for others.

If you're open to listening, if you're open to self correction, then you know that you can't knowâ¦. When new evidence appears, or a new point of view appears, by being ready to consider it, by being mindful of what is available to understand, we have a chance at least to converge, not on what I think is right or what you think is right, but what actually might be true.

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend, full of great memories!

P.S. thank you to all the folks who participated in our online art auction earlier this month. We raised and donated $5500.00 to the Victoria Foundation to support local charities.