Virtual Engrams: A Phase-Relational Hypothesis for Memory Stability Across Neural Drift and Conscious Reinstatement

Neural memory can remain behaviorally stable even when the participating cells and population patterns change. This paper distinguishes three layers that are often collapsed: durable physical constraints that make recall possible, the current carrier ensemble recruited during one retrieval, and the relational content reconstructed across that ensemble. A virtual engram is therefore a dynamically instantiated relation, not an immaterial memory and not a claim that memory is independent of physical tissue. The release includes a source genealogy, numbered equations, longitudinal and perturbational experiments, an executable carrier-drift benchmark, adverse phase-irrelevant controls, regression tests, a bounded Lean formalization, and explicit failure conditions. The synthetic results show that relational models can retain content identity under carrier drift while fixed-cell and amplitude-only models fail under the declared generator. The paper separately requires evidence for content reconstruction and for conscious reinstatement; success at one endpoint cannot substitute for the other.