Thinking of the future and past: the roles of the frontal pole and the medial temporal lobes

a b s t r a c tA crucial aspect of the human mind is the ability to project the self along the time line to past and future. It has been argued that such self-projection is essential to re-experience past experiences and predict future events. In-depth analysis of a novel paradigm investigating mental time shows that the speed of this ''self-projection" in time depends logarithmically on the temporal-distance between an imagined ''location" on the time line that participants were asked to imagine and the location of another imagined event from the time line. This logarithmic pattern suggests that events in human cognition are spatially mapped along an imagery mental time line. We argue that the present time-line data are comparable to the spatial mapping of numbers along the mental number line and that such spatial maps are a fundamental basis for cognition.

Section: Methods and Resultsmentioning

confidence: 63%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The mental time line: An analogue of the mental number line in the mapping of life events

Arzy

Adi-Japha

Blanke

2009

“…In so far as our preliminary results indicate differences in the shift of memory for the future, in comparison to episodic past memory, during sleep onset hypnagogia, they should be considered in conjunction with emerging differences for these memory structures in waking (Addis, Wong, & Schacter, 2007;Okuda et al, 2003;Schacter et al, 2012).…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 84%

As we fall asleep we forget about the future: A quantitative linguistic analysis of mentation reports from hypnagogia

Speth

Schloerscheidt

Speth

2016

Citation for published version (APA):Speth, J., Schloerscheidt, A. M., & Speth, C. (2016). As we fall asleep we forget about the future: a quantitative linguistic analysis of mentation reports from hypnagogia. Consciousness and Cognition, 45, 235-244. DOI: 10.1016/j.concog.2016.08.014 General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in Discovery Research Portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.• Users may download and print one copy of any publication from Discovery Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research.• You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain.• You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal. Take down policyIf you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. AbstractWe present a quantitative study of mental time travel to the past and future in sleep onset hypnagogia. Three independent, blind judges analysed a total of 150 mentation reports from different intervals prior to and after sleep onset. The linguistic tool for the mentation report analysis grounds on established grammatical and cognitive-semantic theories, and proof of concept has been provided in previous studies. The current results indicate that memory for the future, but not for the past, decreases in sleep onset -thereby supporting preliminary physiological evidence at the level of brain function. While recent memory research emphasizes similarities in the cognitive and physiological processes of mental time travel to the past and future, the current study explores a state of consciousness which may serve to dissociate between the two. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

“…Consistent with these propositions, it has been found that amnesic patients who are unable to recall their personal past typically have difficulties in imagining possible future experiences (Klein, Loftus, & Kihlstrom, 2002;Tulving, 1985). A recent study using positron emission tomography (PET) further indicates that common cerebral bases underlie thinking of the future and past (Okuda et al, 2003). In addition, Williams et al (1996, Experiment 1) reported that suicidal patients had difficulties both in retrieving specific autobiographical memories and in generating specific images of their future, and that the specificity levels for the past and the future were correlated.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 93%

Phenomenal characteristics associated with projecting oneself back into the past and forward into the future: Influence of valence and temporal distance

D’Argembeau¹,

Linden

2004

675

650

As humans, we frequently engage in mental time travel, reliving past experiences and imagining possible future events. This study examined whether similar factors affect the subjective experience associated with remembering the past and imagining the future.Participants mentally "re-experienced" or "pre-experienced" positive and negative events that differed in their temporal distance from the present (close versus distant), and then rated the phenomenal characteristics (i.e., sensorial, contextual, and emotional details) associated with their representations. For both past and future, representations of positive events were associated with a greater feeling of re-experiencing (or pre-experiencing) than representations of negative events. In addition, representations of temporally close events (both past and future) contained more sensorial and contextual details, and generated a stronger feeling of reexperiencing (or pre-experiencing) than representations of temporally distant events. It is suggested that the way we both remember our past and imagine our future is constrained by our current goals. One of the most fascinating achievements of the human mind is its ability to engage in mental time travel in order to mentally relive past experiences (Suddendorf & Busby, 2003;Tulving, 2002;Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997). When mentally traveling back to the past, we may remember an event in considerable detail, for instance by "seeing" in our mind the location where this past experience took place as well as the persons and objects that were present, by remembering the unfolding of the event as well as what we felt or thought when experiencing it, and so forth. Such detailed sensorial and contextual (spatio-temporal) information is an essential aspect of memory because it provides the rememberer with a subjective "sense of self" in the past (Klein, 2001) and enables him or her to distinguish memories of events that have been personally experienced in the past from other kinds of representations such as dreams, imagined events, or beliefs (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). According to Tulving's most recent characterization of episodic memory (Tulving, 2002;Wheeler et al., 1997), the hallmark of episodic retrieval is what he terms "autonoetic" (self-knowing) consciousness, which is "the kind of consciousness that mediates an individual's awareness of his or her existence and identity in subjective time extending from the personal past through the present to the personal future" (Tulving, 1985, p. 1). Autonoetic consciousness is thought to allow not only the subjective experience associated with reexperiencing a past experience but also the ability to project oneself forward in time to mentally "pre-experience" an event (Wheeler et al., 1997). However, although many researchers have showed increased interest in the subjective experience of remembering, by investigating either states of awareness (e.g., Gardiner, 1988;Tulving, 1985) or phenomenal characteristics (e.g., Johnson, Foley, Suengas, & Raye, ...