Memory for the Future: Psychodynamic Approach to Time and Self Through the Default Network

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Psychoanalysis
• Philosophy of Time

Background:

• The self is understood as a biopsychosocial history, continuously shaped by time.
• Psychoanalysis explores the self and its temporal dimensions, linking past experiences to future trajectories.
• A historical and multidisciplinary approach highlights the connections between psychoanalysis, physics, and neuroscience.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a neural overlapping of the self and time within the Default Network.
• To explore the theoretical and clinical implications of this connection for psychoanalysis and psychodynamic neuroscience.
• To support the hypothesis with evidence from cognitive neuroscience and functional neuroimaging.

Main Methods:

• Reviewing philosophical and scientific traditions linking self and time.
• Analyzing studies in cognitive neurosciences and functional neuroimaging (resting-state fMRI).
• Discussing the ontogenetic development of time perception and its relation to self-development.

Main Results:

• Suggesting a neural entanglement between past and future within the Default Network, linked to the self.
• Highlighting the role of the Default Network in integrating temporal information and self-representation.
• Using Alzheimer's Disease as a case study where time perception and self-functions are impaired.

Conclusions:

• The Default Network may serve as a neural substrate for the integration of self and time.
• This neuro-psychoanalytic perspective can enhance our understanding of self-development and temporal processing.
• Further research in psychodynamic neuroscience is warranted to explore these clinical and theoretical implications.