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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jan 19, 2026

Resurrection of Dormant Daphnia magna: Protocol and Applications

Resurrection of Dormant Daphnia magna: Protocol and Applications

Published on: January 19, 2018

Mental time travel, language, and evolution.

Michael C Corballis¹

¹School of Psychology, University of Auckland, New Zealand.

Neuropsychologia

|September 28, 2019

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Mental time travel, the ability to recall past and imagine future events, may not be unique to humans. Evidence suggests nonhuman animals also possess this capacity, supported by brain activity in the hippocampus.

Keywords:

Evolution Hippocampus Imagination Language Memory Mental time travel

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Neuroscience
Comparative Psychology
Evolutionary Psychology

Background:

The concept of mental time travel, or recalling past and imagining future personal events, was introduced by Tulving (1985).
Initially, this capacity, linked to episodic memory and declarative memory, was considered uniquely human, possibly due to its association with language and displacement (referencing the nonpresent).

Purpose of the Study:

To challenge the notion that mental time travel is exclusively a human trait.
To explore the evolutionary continuity of spatiotemporal imagination and its neural underpinnings across species.

Main Methods:

Review of behavioral evidence from diverse species (birds, mammals, apes) indicating past event recall and future event imagination.
Analysis of brain recordings (rodents, humans) showing hippocampal activity during replay of past events and simulation of unexperienced future events.

Main Results:

Behavioral data suggest that nonhuman animals exhibit abilities consistent with mental time travel.
Neuroimaging reveals conserved hippocampal function in replaying past and simulating future events across species, indicating evolutionary continuity.
The hippocampal/entorhinal system, with cortical involvement, demonstrates a generative capacity for spatiotemporal imagination.

Conclusions:

Mental time travel is likely not unique to humans, with evidence pointing to its presence in various animal species.
The neural mechanisms for spatiotemporal imagination, particularly hippocampal function, show evolutionary continuity.
Language's evolution for displacement may have facilitated the sharing of imaginative explorations, but the core capacity for imagination predates language.