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From brain scans to theater of the mind: Do you know how the brain creates scenarios of the past and future?
In the field of psychology, psychological time travel refers to people's ability to reconstruct personal past events (i.e., episodic memory) and imagine possible future situations (i.e., episodic foresight). This concept was proposed by two scholars in psychology, Thomas Suddendorf and Michael Corballis, and is based on Endel Tulving’s research on episodic memory. The study of psychological time travel has attracted the participation of scholars from many disciplines, including psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, and philosophers. Important areas of research include the relationship between memory and foresight, the evolution of this ability, human uniqueness, development in young children, the brain mechanisms underlying it and its potential links to consciousness, self and free will.
Mental time travel can be thought of as a kind of theater of the mind, a process that relies on the cooperation of multiple brain areas.
In academia, declarative memory is defined as the ability to store and retrieve information that can be articulated and includes facts about the world (i.e., semantic memory) as well as autobiographical details of personal experiences (i.e., episodic memory) . Tulving proposed that episodic memory involves a so-called "self-knowledge" awareness, which requires first-person subjective experience. In contrast, semantic memory does not require this kind of mental simulation. Psychological time travel specifically refers to this "self-knowledge" system, and therefore mainly includes episodic memory and episodic foresight. Multiple studies have demonstrated the inextricable connection between episodic memory and episodic prospection, including similarities in their developmental pathways and similar impairment characteristics exhibited by neuropsychiatric disorders and brain injuries, all of which have been supported by neuroimaging.
Research so far shows that episodic memory and episodic foresight are shared developmental systems in the brain, and this system is thought to be related to the overall situation construction ability.
Brain regions that detect mental time travel have attracted widespread attention in neuroimaging. Several functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have revealed a close correspondence between brain activity when recalling past experiences and imagining future ones. These studies found that specific brain regions, such as the left hippocampus and right mid-posterior temporal cortex, were significantly activated during the construction of both past and future events, suggesting that they play a key role in mental time travel. In addition, episodic future thinking involves multiple component processes such as information retrieval and integration, subjective time processing, and self-reference processing.
The design of our brains allows us to mentally travel through time, and this ability may be one of the important characteristics that makes humans unique.
Interestingly, the ability to mentally time travel is not limited to humans, but some animals also seem to have some similar abilities. Different short-term behavioral and psychological responses have been used to explore animals' future plans and their memories. For example, black-capped magpies have been found to exhibit episodic memory for food-hiding behaviors.
Research on children shows that the development of mental time travel unfolds gradually, with many of the necessary mental subcomponents appearing by about the age of four. These studies not only show us how to recall the past, but also reveal how children improve in talking about future events. Through a series of experiments, scientists have discovered that these abilities and their related cognitive processes are of great significance for mastering interpersonal relationships and decision-making processes.
Early developmental research suggests that while children may know more about future events than they are letting on, their behavior may demonstrate some pre-existing prospective abilities.
As for the measurement of psychological time travel, it involves the dual detection of episodic memory and episodic foresight. The methods of several studies are designed to test a person's memory recall at a point in time, thereby demonstrating its accuracy. However, such tests often do not reflect people's actual memories. Therefore, in this area, there is still a need to further improve the accuracy and reliability of testing. Exploring the potential of psychological time travel will not only enrich our understanding of the human brain, but also open up new ways of thinking about the interconnectedness of our memories, lives, and futures.
Faced with the revelations brought about by psychological time travel, have you ever thought about how this ability shapes our lives and interactions with the external world?
