Mental time travel
The possibility of time travel, the physical journey to particular past or future events, has always been looked into vaguely and not a lot found on the same. The interest in the subject on time travel is fueled by some people believing its physically achievable while at the same time being logically absurd (Smith & Nicholas J.J). Although for now, the concept of time travel is still under-searched and has no definite answer, some of the ideas under this topic have encouraging findings that give hope for the application of the concept. Mental time travel (MTT), the term “coined to refer to the faculty that allows humans to mentally project themselves backward in time to relive or forward to pre-live, events” (Suddendorf & Corballis), is one of the concepts that has fertile findings. Breakthrough research made by scientists after several tests on volunteers shows that mental time travel is unique to the human mind and differentiated from animal consciousness (Madore,2016). This uniqueness gives more developments on the effects of MMT on the human mind and the milestones achieved in various disciplines. Researchers have also been able to unearth time travel from the mind’s origin. Mental time travel is an essential and crucial link to what we tend to do every day. We do not seem to consider this and assume it is just memory that guides us to make sober decisions from our comparison to the past. (Theodoros,2017) The memory only helps in storing the information in our past events as opposed to mental time travel that gives us the restrain not to repeat our previous mistakes, which led to specific shortcomings. These decisions are favorable in the long term.
Mental time is as a result of “Chronesthesia” the “hypothetical brain/mind ability or capacity, acquired by humans through evolution that allows them to be constantly aware of the past and the future” (Murray). Memory, which the fundamental ability that makes mental time travel possible, developed with the evolution of human beings. Consciousness in human beings is dependent on organs in the medial temporal lobe, among other things, the hippocampus (Suddendorf & Corballis). The temporal lobe and the hippocampus developed to complex futures in human being to facilitate revisiting the past and projecting the future, trough evolution. To distinct the concept of time travel to memory, grasp of the idea of episodic memory is needed. Episodic memory is a form of long memory that is information stored over a long period, whether a few hours a few days ago or many years ago. Long-term memories are mainly found outside the conscious mind. The access of the information in the long-term memory many times is what makes it more reliable in the neural networks where it is encoded and makes it very easy to recall. (Theodoros,2017) Episodic memory, therefore, means the consciousness of daily events like locations, time, emotions specific to certain occurrences. It is the collection of past experiences encountered by a person at a particular time and place (Madore,2016). A person will remember vividly instances which occurred mainly at crucial scenarios. These scenarios will be both positive and negative. They include situations such as their birthday parties, graduations, the first kiss, burials of close relatives.
On the contrary, MMT is a recreation of events that have already happened with a little assistance from memory. Through MMT, one can vividly recreate happenings and retrieve things that were not captured by the consciousness. Human beings have similarities with animals in many ways. However, they have a unique ability when it comes to mental capacity, leading to a more developed ability for mental time travel.
Human beings have a clear relation to animals proven scientifically, especially mammals. However, the mind of human beings is more developed than other living creatures, and because of these abilities, human beings have a more sophisticated ability to mental time travel. Animals similar to human beings have displayed the ability to remember crucial information, and thus demonstrating that they can experience mental time travel. “For example, the chimpanzee Panzee declared where food was hidden outside her enclosure by touching a lexigram denoting the food and directing a naïve human to it by pointing to its location” (Menzel 2005). However, as compared to animals, human beings have a great brain capacity and thus a high capacity for mental time travel. Human beings have an advantage over animals because “there is so far no use of tense, nor any sense that the animals are telling stories about previous or anticipated episodes. In marked contrast, human conversation is replete with references to past and planned future episodes” (Szagun 1978). This uniqueness gives human beings a high power as evident in the last 15 years that have witnessed a considerable level of research on MTT, concluding that the future and past mental time travel has a close relation and rely on the simple neurocognitive system. Being able to travel mentally in time has been envisaged, especially in the future, as a vast human evolutionary step achieved (Theodoros,2017). This concept will enable humans to plan, prepare and shape what they deem of the future and to their advantage; however, this concept is affected by some factors that include: Age, future orientation, and theory of the mind.
Scientific concepts are usually cushioned by factors that either contribute to its existence or disqualifies the idea. Mental time travel is not an exception to this fact, as it has many factors that contribute to it being possible or impossible. Age is one of the significant factors that affect mental time travel. Our ages vary as we grow and learn new things in our daily ways of lives. We learn new things every day, and the body develops with the mind too. Until it is at its optimum stage in life when it tends to remain constant. (Madore,2016). Data from two groups, young and older people, who were put through mental time travel experiments showed that older people have less ability to mentally time travel as compared to young people. These experiments show that older people above sixty years of age have low brain capabilities compared to younger people in their early twenties people. These results also show that younger people under the age of eighteen also have little mental ability. The concept behind this age theory is that the brain fully develops when a person attains the age of 25 and can reason critically and make sound decisions. At 18 years, a person can be deemed matured enough, but the mind will still have a margin of growth. (Kourken,2016). While age has a significant impact on remembering the past, it has more effect on the projection of future events. Research carried out suggest that age affects mental abilities. These effects, in turn, influence mental time travel and “despite evidence that older adults performed worse in both remembering the past and imagining the future, more recently Gaesser and colleagues [12] found that they might show even more pronounced difficulties in imagining future events than in remembering past events” (Anelli et al.). Aging, therefore, makes it difficult for the long-term memory to retrieve information in older people, and discoveries have been made that show traveling to the future becomes harder due to aging. Memory differs with the variation in ages and is the factor that guides the presence and possibility of time travel. Mind develops with the development of humankind (Kourken,2016) The organs in the body, i.e., the temporal lobe and the hippocampus advance to help reassess the past and forecast the future. It is more developed in younger individuals and diminishes with older age. The results from such experiments support the conclusion that age is a significant factor. Another factor that plays a larger role in MMT is the theory of mind
Theory of mind is the ability to attribute mental states, beliefs, intents, desires, emotions, knowledge, etc. to oneself, and others, and to understand that others have beliefs, desires, intentions, and perspectives that are different from one’s own (Filomena,2016). human beings have been able to forecast and foresee future development, a form of MMT. It helped with the planning and preparation. Forecast in humans is evident when they used it to predict the onset of rains which affected the planting seasons and food security at large. Through the estimates, humans were able to store surplus food for future use. This characteristic is not unique to man alone but also other evident in animals who developed anticipatory capacities to enhance their survival rate. An example is the bears eat a lot of salmon fish whenever they are migrating in summer, and this will help them survive through the winter.
The only difference between the forecast in animals and human beings is that human beings use the theory of mind to incorporate MMT. In contrast, animals cannot be considered to have mentally time-traveled because they can’t necessarily attribute mental state; however, they have an inborn memory, which helps them to forecast. Learning and memory are regarded as adaptations for the future, which saves an individual of particular peril, but because of beliefs, they differ independently (Filomena, 2016). A population may not stand to benefit from the same as knowledge and memory vary individually. Plans and structures put in place are all part of innate memories that humans have, and although they differ, they can be used to be ready for whatever storms come.MMT, through the theory of mind, makes humans become flexible and adapt to new changes quickly while also using our episodic memory from the past to make the best right choices in progressing forward.
Future orientation also plays a role in mental time travel. While episodic memory reconstructs an event personally experienced by an individual (Filomena, 2016), the mind determines how the images are interpreted. The memory takes clues from past events and using them with interpretations attached to the scenes to shape the future. A person will realize it is sunset when he notices the sun disappearing in the horizon to the west. Having that time concept enables one to understand that the future will eventually also become the past. The common factor will be the time it will take to do so. Future orientation in MMT also determines future relationships; this occurs when a person mentally travels to his/her past relations to assess the current or future affairs. Although mental time travel may be deemed as a dependable source of information, it’s essential to use it with caution as specific instances of false event creation are documented (Filomena, 2016). These are memories created in the laboratory, and a person believes he had such cases. It means that time travel is not judged on its veracity but a person’s expression. The positive side is that with the possibility of time travel, new advantages arise.
Mental time travel brings along different possibilities, such as its advantages and its disadvantages. It has been proven that reflecting past activities the human mind prevent certain events from recurring, Bridget Murray of the American psychological Association reinforces that “Over time…. people discovered that recalling past events helped them learn what to avoid and how to behave in the future” (Murray). Furthermore, mental time travel creates a sense of consciousness of things that are happening around human beings; for example, one can revisit events that took place in the past to come up with an effective decision like in the case of relationship where psychological time travel can be used to evaluate potential ties and gauge whether they are suitable for an individual. I other fields such as hospitality and mechanical engineering, mental time travel can be used to ascertain effective methods and those that are not to discard faulty methods and pickup working ones (Murray). Mental time travel gives the ability to access information that would otherwise have been lost. Information on happenings at a specific time when the individual was at the scene doesn’t know how to access the report. Such information could help law enforcement get to the root of unsolved crimes. Furthermore, mental time travel has contributed so much to mental health research as it gives new possible treatments to psychological issues.
Since mental health involves the revisiting of past events and projection of plans, scientists to analyses a person with a mental health condition can use it. Scientists researching metal time travel depend on psychiatric patients for mental time travel experiments while helping them through therapy. While some people will argue that it has no benefits, “Nothing makes such benefits of chronesthesia more apparent than studying people who have suffered brain damage that impairs their mental time travel ability but does not affect other cognitive functions” (Murray). Research experiments carried out using mental time travel can help discover new treatments for patients with amnesia, and the psychiatric patients can reverse their situations and start over again with the same memories and ethical decision making just like other ordinary people (Mahr & Csibra, 2018). The brain organs develop and adapt to the changes which touch on the organs in the medial temporal lobe and the hippocampus. This development in the brain opens up doors to better treatment of mental cases, which did not seem possible. Mental time travel can also be used as therapy for less severe mental patient cases. Mental time travel has a significant impact on emotions in human beings.
Apart from the perspective on evolution, mental time travel projection to the future contributes significantly to our emotions. Out of the daily thoughts we have, 12% are thoughts about the future (Klinger & Cox, 1987) most of this projection are positive as most people tend only to imagine good things happening to them. This projection affects the emotions of individuals in the sense that the ones seeing success in their future, end up with a good mood. MMT also inspires most people to strategize, change their behaviors, and mentally prepare to do certain activities to achieve their projections(Pham &Taylor). By mentally imagining the future, humans tend to create images that positively affect their present undertaking so that they can adequately safeguard their futures and, by doing this, help to enhance their survival rates. Humans invoke their emotions in time travel and create favorable prospects in their mental time travel and are motivated to make specific changes in their life like living healthy and taking good food or avoiding certain behaviors which shorten the life spans (werning & Suddendorf, 2016). The good memories are envisioned as past achievements and provide guides to repeating such moments while the negative ones are the shortcomings that they came by and provide lessons on how to avoid them and let them not reoccur again.
MMT is advantageous because it helps create visual images of the past in their mind, and People who possess higher visual imagery come up with better and detailed representations of their past and futures and which tend to be more meaningful and even more emotional. (werning & Suddendorf,2016). At times the experiences of time travel may not be all about the plans or measures to take to be better but to feel better at present certainly. Research transcribed by Tony Buchanan perceives that at times people retrieve the good old memories to improve on a present negative mood.
Mental time travel will continue to amuse and puzzle many, but with extensive research and breakthroughs, it will open up more avenues to better understand how the state of mind work and how to travel into the future or the past improves mental health. The research will also show how MMT eventually changes the future. It is possible to move mentally into time, and adequate studies and research will shape this by identifying the factors that matter and exploit them to facilitate MMT.