It has been suggested by Julesz & Pennington (1965) that certain types of composite stimulus may be memorized in a holographic rather than a photographic manner, It will here be pointed out that not only static but time-varying patterns can be stored in an analogous fashion, and the word ‘holophone’ is proposed for such a system, the theory of which is expounded in detail. If the memorization of short sequences does involve holophonic as opposed to gramophonic principles, then not only would the problem of content-addressing be automatically solved, but those parts of the brain which hold the memories in question should exhibit periodic response characteristics which might be directly accessible to neurophysiological study.