Is mental time travel real time travel?

Complex Mental Time Travel

This article argues that investigating the conceptual structure underlying the use of the pluperfect and the future perfect reveals a new complex type of nested dual mental time travel: mental time travel into posteriority embedded into mental time travel into “anteriority in the past” (underlying the pluperfect) versus mental time travel into posteriority embedded into mental time travel into ...

Mental time travel in animals?

Are humans alone in their ability to reminisce about the past and imagine the future? Recent evidence suggests that food-storing birds (scrub jays) have access to information about what they have stored where and when. This has raised the possibility of mental time travel (MTT) in animals and sparked similar research with other species. Here we caution that such data do not provide convincing e...

Schizotypy and mental time travel.

Mental time travel is the capacity to imagine the autobiographical past and future. Schizotypy is a dimensional measure of psychosis-like traits found to be associated with creativity and imagination. Here, we examine the phenomenological qualities of mental time travel in highly schizotypal individuals. After recollecting past episodes (autobiographical memory) and imagining future events (epi...

Quality of Real-time Travel Time Information

Brain rhythms in mental time travel

The memory theorist Endel Tulving referred to the ability to search through one's memories, and revisit events and episodes from one's past, as mental time travel. This process involves the reactivation of past mental states reflecting the perceptual and conceptual characteristics of the original experience. Widely distributed neural circuitry is engaged in the service of memory search, and the...