Psychic/Mental Time Travel

Once again I stole this magazine from work. It’s and old issue but it still had this interesting little piece:

www.newscientist.com...

“IMAGINE your next vacation. You are relaxing on a beach, waves lapping at the shore, a cool breeze wafting through the trees and the sun caressing your skin. Fill in the details. What else do you see? Now, remember yesterday's commute. Again, a picture emerges. You are on the train or in your car, or maybe just wandering from your kitchen to your desk. Can you remember what you were wearing? Perhaps you have forgotten that part already.
Without breaking sweat, you can hurtle yourself backwards or forwards in time in your mind's eye - what is known as "mental time travel". One of these visions really happened and the other was fantasy, yet the act of conjuring them up probably felt very similar. It's as if, embedded somewhere in your brain, there is a time machine that can take you forwards and backwards at will. “

Do you find yourself daydreaming a lot? Are you often thinking about what you could be doing rather than doing what’s in front of you? Well this study suggests that such flights of reverie are more important than you might think.

According to this article humans can easily travel backwards and forwards through time. At least within our minds we can. I am of course referring to our ability to recall the past and imagine the future. The significance of the article is that neuroscientists are starting to gather evidence that suggests there is a link between the two mental activities.

A study on one patient with selective amnesia provided the first link between past and future recall. A patient known as K.C. lost his memory in 1981 after suffering brain damage in an accident. K.C had a problem with his episodic memory.

”…we have several different types of long term memory, which can be broadly broken down into three catagories: semantic (knowledge of facts), episodic (memories of events in our lives) and procedural (knowing how to do something like ride a bicycle).

As well as not being able to recall memories of his personal past it seemed that K.C. was unable to think about his personal future.
Another patient, named D.B., whose episodic memory was wiped after a heart attack starved his brain of oxygen, had similar problems. He could remember where he worked and what company but he could not recall one experience of actually being at work. He could also understand future concepts such as global warming being a worldwide threat but he could not imagine anything about his personal future.

Apparently other studies have found that suicidally depressed people experience a reduced amount of detail in their memories of the past and an equivalent lack of detail about their imagined future. Another study shows that people with brain damage that causes them to invent wild tales about their past will tend to do the same about their futures.

It seems that these observations have been made for over a decade but it is only recently that researchers have been able to properly study the link between recalling the past and imagining the future.

To imagine relaxing on a beach in the Caribbean is one thing but we actually project ourselves forward in time regularly. By deciding to go to the pub, doing some washing up or taking the dog for a walk, we are thinking about the future. Apparently the average person spends about 12 percent of their waking hours thinking about their future.

From an evolutionary perspective, remembering the difficulties of finding food at winter would enable us to plan ahead and store food for the difficult times ahead.

More similarities begin to emerge between imagining the future and recalling the past when we have to recall fine details. Remembering the exact passage of a conversation or every line of dialogue in a movie is not always easy but if you are pressed to try and remember something than your brain will do the best it can. Often it will construct an inaccurate memory.

”This type of fallibility can be easily demonstrated in lab studies. People shown a list of words such as “tired”, “bed”, “dream”, “doze” and “pillow” can be easily tricked into remembering that the word “sleep” appeared on the list too, even if it did not.

Interestingly amnesic patients with Alzheimer’s disease often perform better at this kind of test than those with fully functioning memories. This makes sense if our memories are designed to remember the outline of things and fill in the rest. This suggests that inaccurate memories are not memory deficits at all.

All of this suggests that those of us capable of great feats of memory would be more imaginative when it comes to thinking about the future. Much of this is speculation and there seems to be a large amount of research and study still to be done of the subject.

Would anybody like to offer up their own experiences on this subject? Do you have a strong memory? Do you also have a vivid imagination? Do you have a strong memory and a less vivid imagination? Vice Versa?

I will be interested to read any relevant responses.

All the bloody time I took to write this and nobody bothers to reply.

Not even to say that it's pointless research or something.

damn you all.

Well this is the second thread where I have read 'damn' in it.

-> moving on.... I have just seen your thread and to be honest, I agree completely with this article but I tend to avoid discussing this subject for my own reasons.

I feel there needs to be further study and a greater weight on psychic phenomena. Thanks to TV, some of the shows like medium are bringing a greater awareness and acceptance into society. We use a nominal percentage of our brain, humans just don't really have any idea just what our brain is capable of.

I am able to do this and have done a few experiments myself. Most of the time it happens during sleep but if i am dedicated enough i can do it while awake, it takes a lot of concentration but sometimes i can do it very quickly. Whenever i tell someone about what i saw it never comes true so i guess talking about it alters the future. Sort of the butterfly effect, one simple change throws everything into chaos. So i don't talk about what i have seen anymore and they all come true exactly.

When you see the visions it is as if you are actually there inside your body experiencing everything as if you were awake. I have tried to come up with explanations as to how it works but i have never been able to come up with something solid. Searching the internet you find that it is quite a common phenomenon. If only i could control what i saw, then all sorts of possibilities would open up.

Originally posted by NJE777
I agree completely with this article but I tend to avoid discussing this subject for my own reasons.

nevermind.

I feel there needs to be further study and a greater weight on psychic phenomena. Thanks to TV, some of the shows like medium are bringing a greater awareness and acceptance into society. We use a nominal percentage of our brain, humans just don't really have any idea just what our brain is capable of.

I don't understand how this relates to the article. Do you know anybody who has a strong memory? Do they also have a vivid imagination?

Originally posted by DraconianKing
I am able to do this and have done a few experiments myself. Most of the time it happens during sleep but if i am dedicated enough i can do it while awake, it takes a lot of concentration but sometimes i can do it very quickly. Whenever i tell someone about what i saw it never comes true so i guess talking about it alters the future. Sort of the butterfly effect, one simple change throws everything into chaos. So i don't talk about what i have seen anymore and they all come true exactly.

I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing here. The mental time travel is simply about imagining the future.

When you see the visions it is as if you are actually there inside your body experiencing everything as if you were awake. I have tried to come up with explanations as to how it works but i have never been able to come up with something solid. Searching the internet you find that it is quite a common phenomenon. If only i could control what i saw, then all sorts of possibilities would open up.

This is more like it. But I would like to know whether you have a strong memory or not. It seems like you have a vivid and powerful imagination and the article suggests that there is a link between past memory and future imaginings. So...do you have a powerful past memory?

They don't ask me much about my memory. Unless, I've already answered and forgot. Ha.ha.

Seriously, though, the day of the Day Dreamer is at hand.

As, to time-travel within the mental state, and the re-call of such. Here's a "FREE" experiment.

Drum up a sequence of events (nuthin' elaborate here), and replay, once. Busy yourself for 5, then try and re-call. It's even more fun on paper!

DON't Cheat!

I think it may have more with the ability to remember and predict consequences (excellent article choice and analysis, by the way.) If you have a good long-term memory and the mechanisms for making parallel connections, you can make comparisions between the current situation and future probabilities.

That's one part of the example. But another may have to do with the "if you can imagine it, you then become open to finding choices that make this happen" sort of mindset (the "think ad grow rich" ideas of Napoleon Hill.)

Will revisit this topic later. Must head off soon.