Thanks for the future memories
To the brain, remembering the past and visualizing the future look surprisingly similar
By Susan Gaidos
When Alice climbs through the looking glass, she encounters a topsy-turvy world. People are punished before committing a crime, and sometimes fingers bleed before a pinprick occurs. Those strange events reflect a memory that works both ways in that world, allowing people to remember things before they happen. As the Queen explains to Alice: “It’s a poor sort of memory that only works backwards.”
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Now, back in this world, scientists are discovering that human memory does indeed work forward. A growing number of studies show that the mental machinery for reliving your past performs another—perhaps more vital—task: envisioning your future.