Passage 1 is excerpted from Linden Miles, “The Meandering Mind: Vection and Mental Time Travel,” ©2010 by Linden Miles. Passage 2 is excerpted from Justin Gregg, “A New Frontier in Animal Intelligence,” ©2013 by Scientific American.
Passage 1
The ability to travel mentally through time sets humans
apart from many other species, yet little is known about this
core cognitive capacity. In particular, what shapes the passage
of the mind’s journey through time?
A core facet of conscious experience is that one’s mind
periodically wanders from the here-and-now. From memories
of lost loves to expectations about forthcoming vacations,
mental time travel (MTT) makes it possible to revisit the past
and pre-experience the future. Present across cultures and
emerging early in childhood, MTT is believed to serve a
pivotal function in human cognition. When confronted with
complex and challenging judgments, simulating future
outcomes (i.e., prospection) on the basis of prior experience
(i.e., retrospection) is a tactic that optimizes decision-making
and behavioral selection. That the past informs the future in
this way (i.e., recollection-guides-simulation) is evidenced
from research demonstrating that retrospection and prospection
rely on largely overlapping neural structures and cognitive
operations.
However, remarkably little is known about the actual
process of MTT and how it impacts people’s behavior. In this
respect, one emerging possibility is that MTT may be
represented in the sensory-motor systems that regulate human
movement (i.e., MTT is embodied). Put simply, traveling
mentally in time may initiate associated bodily movements
through space. Initial evidence for such a thought-action
coupling during MTT was reported in a study in which
spontaneous fluctuations in the direction and magnitude of
postural sway were assessed while participants engaged in
either retrospective or prospective mental imagery. The results
revealed that the temporal locus of MTT did indeed influence
the direction of people’s movements — whereas retrospection
was accompanied by significant backwards sway, prospection
yielded postural movement in an anterior direction.
Passage 2
Santino was a misanthrope with a habit of pelting tourists
with rocks. As his reputation for mischief grew, he had to
devise increasingly clever ways to ambush his wary victims.
Santino learned to stash his rocks just out of sight and casually
stand just a few feet from them in order to throw off suspicion.
At the very moment that passersby were fooled into thinking
that he meant them no harm, he grabbed his hidden projectiles
and launched his attack.
Santino, you see, is not human. He’s a chimpanzee at
Furuvik Zoo in Sweden. His crafty stone-throwing escapades
have made him a global celebrity, and also caught the attention
of researchers studying how animals, much like humans, might
be able to plan their behavior.
Santino is one of a handful of animals that scientists believe
are showing a complex cognitive ability called episodic
memory. Episodic memory is the ability to recall past events
that one has the sense of having personally experienced. Unlike
semantic memory, which involves recalling simple facts like
“bee stings hurt,” episodic memory involves putting yourself at
the heart of the memory; like remembering the time you
swatted at a bee with a rolled up newspaper and it got angry
and stung your hand.
If an animal can imagine itself interacting with the world in
the past via episodic memory – like Santino recalling a failed
attack when a human spotted him holding a rock, or you
remembering swatting at a bee – it stands to reason that the
animal might also be able to imagine itself in the future in a
similar scenario, and thus plan its behavior. Santino might opt
to hide his rocks, and you might decide to stop antagonizing
bees. The ability to represent oneself and one’s actions in the
mind’s eye – both in the past [and] in the future – is what
scientists refer to as “mental time travel.”
Passage 1
The ability to travel mentally through time sets humans
apart from many other species, yet little is known about this
core cognitive capacity. In particular, what shapes the passage
of the mind’s journey through time?
A core facet of conscious experience is that one’s mind
periodically wanders from the here-and-now. From memories
of lost loves to expectations about forthcoming vacations,
mental time travel (MTT) makes it possible to revisit the past
and pre-experience the future. Present across cultures and
emerging early in childhood, MTT is believed to serve a
pivotal function in human cognition. When confronted with
complex and challenging judgments, simulating future
outcomes (i.e., prospection) on the basis of prior experience
(i.e., retrospection) is a tactic that optimizes decision-making
and behavioral selection. That the past informs the future in
this way (i.e., recollection-guides-simulation) is evidenced
from research demonstrating that retrospection and prospection
rely on largely overlapping neural structures and cognitive
operations.
However, remarkably little is known about the actual
process of MTT and how it impacts people’s behavior. In this
respect, one emerging possibility is that MTT may be
represented in the sensory-motor systems that regulate human
movement (i.e., MTT is embodied). Put simply, traveling
mentally in time may initiate associated bodily movements
through space. Initial evidence for such a thought-action
coupling during MTT was reported in a study in which
spontaneous fluctuations in the direction and magnitude of
postural sway were assessed while participants engaged in
either retrospective or prospective mental imagery. The results
revealed that the temporal locus of MTT did indeed influence
the direction of people’s movements — whereas retrospection
was accompanied by significant backwards sway, prospection
yielded postural movement in an anterior direction.
Passage 2
Santino was a misanthrope with a habit of pelting tourists
with rocks. As his reputation for mischief grew, he had to
devise increasingly clever ways to ambush his wary victims.
Santino learned to stash his rocks just out of sight and casually
stand just a few feet from them in order to throw off suspicion.
At the very moment that passersby were fooled into thinking
that he meant them no harm, he grabbed his hidden projectiles
and launched his attack.
Santino, you see, is not human. He’s a chimpanzee at
Furuvik Zoo in Sweden. His crafty stone-throwing escapades
have made him a global celebrity, and also caught the attention
of researchers studying how animals, much like humans, might
be able to plan their behavior.
Santino is one of a handful of animals that scientists believe
are showing a complex cognitive ability called episodic
memory. Episodic memory is the ability to recall past events
that one has the sense of having personally experienced. Unlike
semantic memory, which involves recalling simple facts like
“bee stings hurt,” episodic memory involves putting yourself at
the heart of the memory; like remembering the time you
swatted at a bee with a rolled up newspaper and it got angry
and stung your hand.
If an animal can imagine itself interacting with the world in
the past via episodic memory – like Santino recalling a failed
attack when a human spotted him holding a rock, or you
remembering swatting at a bee – it stands to reason that the
animal might also be able to imagine itself in the future in a
similar scenario, and thus plan its behavior. Santino might opt
to hide his rocks, and you might decide to stop antagonizing
bees. The ability to represent oneself and one’s actions in the
mind’s eye – both in the past [and] in the future – is what
scientists refer to as “mental time travel.”