In psychology, mental time travel is the capacity to mentally reconstruct personal events from the past (episodic memory) as well as to imagine possible scenarios in the future (episodic foresight/episodic future thinking). The term was coined by Thomas Suddendorf and Michael Corballis,[1] building on
Endel Tulving's work on episodic memory[2] (Tulving proposed the alternative term chronesthesia.[3]).
Mental time travel has been studied by psychologists, cognitive neuroscientists, philosophers and in a variety of other academic disciplines.[4][5] Major areas of interest include the nature of the relationship between memory and foresight,[6][7] the evolution of the ability (including whether it is uniquely human or shared with other animals),[8][9] its development in young children,[10][11] its underlying brain mechanisms,[12][13] as well as its potential links to consciousness,[14] the self,[15] and free will.[16]
^Cite error: The named reference pmid9204544 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
^Tulving E (1985). "Memory and Consciousness". Canadian Psychology. 26: 1–12. doi:10.1037/h0080017.
^Atance CM, o'Neill DK (2005). "The emergence of episodic future thinking in humans". Learning and Motivation. 36 (2): 126–144. doi:10.1016/j.lmot.2005.02.003.
^Seligman ME, Railton P, Baumeister RF, Sripada C (March 2013). "Navigating into the Future or Driven by the Past". Perspectives on Psychological Science. 8 (2): 119–41. doi:10.1177/1745691612474317. PMID26172493. S2CID17506436.