New Insight Into How the Brain Performs Mental Time Travel

In a paper recently published in the Journal of Neuroscience, a team of scientists from Vanderbilt University shed new light on how the brain processes elaborate memories so rich in detail regarding the time and place of an original experience, that it is similar to traveling through time. During the study, scientists analyzed individuals performing simple memory recollection tasks and found that they could use the activity patterns in a specific region of the brain to substantially improve their ability to predict the order in which the participants recalled information that they recently studied. Results of the study showed that when a participant’s brain scan indicated that they recalled an object on a list of 24 objects with high fidelity, then their next response was likely to be the next item on the list. However, when the brain scan indicated that the object was an isolated recollection, then the next object the person recalled could come from anywhere on the list. “This model was much better than chance at predicting what a person would recall next, but when we told the model what a person’s brain activity was at the moment they recalled a particular item, the model became much better at predicting which item would be recalled next,” the author of the study stated. “This demonstrates that the brain stamps memories with a temporal code. These time-travel recollections allow the brain to retrieve that temporal code, which makes memories for nearby things more accessible, in this case the next item in the list.” To read more about this study, click here.