If The Copenhagen Interpretation is correct then each observer - that is you and I - brings into existence their own version of reality.

This idea is not new. Philosophers have long argued that we can never really know what is outside of our own conscious awareness. However in recent years the support for this belief from quantum physics (termed The Participatory Universe by John Wheeler) is supplemented by empirical experiments within the new science of 'Consciousness Studies'. These have shown that our perception of external reality is not immediate. It is recorded (possibly using a process similar to holograms) then 'projected' to consciousness as a facsimile.

If this is the case then what we all think is happening now may have happened years ago in a similar way that a film may be viewed now but it was recorded ten years ago. This idea is very popular at the moment. Films such as "The Matrix" and "Vanilla Sky" take this as a central theme.

The available evidence for such a belief is intriguing. Experiments by the American neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield and his successors Jose Delgado and A S Halgren have implied that memories can be recalled and relived in the same way as a video or DVD can be played. These stimulated memories are recalled as a full, virtual reality experience with all the original senses being used. The implication is that every incident that takes place in a person's life is stored in such a way that it can be, in effect, re-lived when required.

Penfield was convinced that the human brain records every perception, memory and experience and that under certain circumstances these 'holographic memories' can be re-stimulated. However when experienced again these memories are so real that the subject cannot tell that they are an illusion. They are literally a re-living of the event.

Another scientist, Karl Pribram, has spent a lifetime studying the mechanics of this holographic recall and is convinced that it is a very real phenomenon. The question is why waste so much processing power to record memories that cannot be easily recalled?