Mental Time Travel: A Retrospective
Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jun 5, 2025

The Joint Effect of Social Comparison and Social Distance on Evaluation of Intertemporal Choice Outcomes in Event-related Potential Studies
Published on: August 25, 2023
1Department of Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA.
Abstract:
Because imagination activates the same neural circuits used in understanding the present, one can access that imagination even in non-linguistic animals through decoding techniques applied to large neural ensembles. This personal retrospective traces the history of the initial discovery that hippocampal theta sequences sweep forward to goals during moments of deliberation and discusses the history that was necessary to put ourselves in the position to recognize this signal. It also discusses how that discovery fits into the larger picture of hippocampal function and the concept of cognition as computation.
Related Concept Videos
Hindsight Biases
Autobiographical Memory
Flashbulb Memory
Framing Effects
Amnesia
The severity and duration of memory loss vary depending on the type and underlying cause. Amnesia is classified into two main types: retrograde and anterograde.
Retrograde amnesia is marked by the loss of memories formed before the onset of the condition. Patients may recall distant past events but often forget those occurring shortly before the incident.
Anterograde...
Reason and Intuition

