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Updated: May 25, 2026

A Real-world What-Where-When Memory Test
Published on: May 16, 2017
The time machine in our mind
1Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA. kurtstocker@berkeley.edu
Abstract:
This article provides the first comprehensive conceptual account for the imagistic mental machinery that allows us to travel through time--for the time machine in our mind. It is argued that language reveals this imagistic machine and how we use it. Findings from a range of cognitive fields are theoretically unified and a recent proposal about spatialized mental time travel is elaborated on. The following novel distinctions are offered: external versus internal viewing of time; ''watching" time versus projective ''travel" through time; optional versus obligatory mental time travel; mental time travel into anteriority or posteriority versus mental time travel into the past or future; single mental time travel versus nested dual mental time travel; mental time travel in episodic memory versus mental time travel in semantic memory; and ''seeing" versus ''sensing" mental imagery. Theoretical, empirical, and applied implications are discussed.
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