Scientists are discovering that human memory does indeed work forward. A growing number of studies show that the mental machinery for reliving your past performs another-perhaps more vital-task: envisioning your future.
Other studies show that total amnesiacs report a "blank" when asked about their personal futures. And severely depressed patients, who tend to think about both the past and future in a nonspecific manner, have difficulty visualizing positive future events.
Such findings have stimulated scientists to rethink the role of memory. Rather than viewing it as a mere storehouse of facts and autobiographical data, researchers are beginning to recognize that memory also constructs, simulates and predicts possible future events in an ever-changing environment. Perhaps, some say, this kind of autobiographical memory exists precisely for this purpose.
Though current studies focus on episodic memory, or memories of events, times and places, Schacter says that other forms of memory such as semantic memory and generalized knowledge are no doubt also relevant to thinking about the future. "Episodic memory seems to be important when people think about their personal futures because it is the source of the details that allow one to build simulations of what might happen."
For more than a century, scientists studying memory have focused on its role in preserving and recovering the past. Eventually, memory's neurochemical nuances were mapped mainly to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
In the early 1980s, researchers identified additional regions used in planning and foresight. Studies of patients with brain lesions suggested that such patients struggled in these tasks as well as in remembering the past. About that time, psychologist Endel Tulving of the University of Toronto suspected that the mental powers enabling humans to remember episodes from the past, such as a disagreement with a client, also confer the ability to foresee possible futures, as in planning an upcoming meeting with that client.
At the time, only one imaging study had been done to examine the general brain regions common to both thinking ahead and remembering the past. By using a more systematic approach, Schacter reasoned, he might be able to pinpoint the components involved in both activities.
In the early stage of constructing an event, the left hippocampal region appeared equally active in remembering and imagining. The overlap was most apparent at the "elaboration phase," when subjects gave details on the events. In addition, certain regions in the right hippocampus became active when subjects imagined a future event, but not when they remembered a past one. Schacter says these activations may reflect a process of recombining details from various past events into a new imaginary episode.
Despite the recent progress, Maguire says scientists are a long way off from understanding how memory's various brain components talk to each other and interact to simulate future events.
Other studies show that total amnesiacs report a "blank" when asked about their personal futures. And severely depressed patients, who tend to think about both the past and future in a nonspecific manner, have difficulty visualizing positive future events.
Such findings have stimulated scientists to rethink the role of memory. Rather than viewing it as a mere storehouse of facts and autobiographical data, researchers are beginning to recognize that memory also constructs, simulates and predicts possible future events in an ever-changing environment. Perhaps, some say, this kind of autobiographical memory exists precisely for this purpose.
Though current studies focus on episodic memory, or memories of events, times and places, Schacter says that other forms of memory such as semantic memory and generalized knowledge are no doubt also relevant to thinking about the future. "Episodic memory seems to be important when people think about their personal futures because it is the source of the details that allow one to build simulations of what might happen."
For more than a century, scientists studying memory have focused on its role in preserving and recovering the past. Eventually, memory's neurochemical nuances were mapped mainly to the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex.
In the early 1980s, researchers identified additional regions used in planning and foresight. Studies of patients with brain lesions suggested that such patients struggled in these tasks as well as in remembering the past. About that time, psychologist Endel Tulving of the University of Toronto suspected that the mental powers enabling humans to remember episodes from the past, such as a disagreement with a client, also confer the ability to foresee possible futures, as in planning an upcoming meeting with that client.
At the time, only one imaging study had been done to examine the general brain regions common to both thinking ahead and remembering the past. By using a more systematic approach, Schacter reasoned, he might be able to pinpoint the components involved in both activities.
In the early stage of constructing an event, the left hippocampal region appeared equally active in remembering and imagining. The overlap was most apparent at the "elaboration phase," when subjects gave details on the events. In addition, certain regions in the right hippocampus became active when subjects imagined a future event, but not when they remembered a past one. Schacter says these activations may reflect a process of recombining details from various past events into a new imaginary episode.
Despite the recent progress, Maguire says scientists are a long way off from understanding how memory's various brain components talk to each other and interact to simulate future events.
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