A Study Says Your Brain Can Travel Through Time. Here’s What It Does to Your Memory.
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A Study Says Your Brain Can Travel Through Time. Here’s What It Does to Your Memory.
A new study shows that employing certain techniques—known as “mental time travel”—can improve recall of a memory. The effects of these techniques wane severely after 24 hours, showing that rejuvenating memories this way is still subject to the inevitable process of forgetting. Researchers liken this forget-recall cycle to the Sisyphean task of Sisyphus who was forever destined to roll a boulder up a hill. Within a 24-hour period, mental time travel could return the mind to a similar state as the original encoding, but the process of Forgetting remained similar, the authors wrote. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , wanted to test whether mental timeTravel could stave off this rapid decline in memory retention. The authors liken it to a kind of Sisysphus-like task.
Although our lives feel filled with both wonderful and painful memories, for the most part, they’re mostly just a long process of forgetting.
A new study shows that employing certain techniques—known as “mental time travel”—can improve recall of that memory.
However, the effects of these techniques wane severely after 24 hours, showing that rejuvenating memories this way is still subject to the inevitable process of forgetting.
One of the many dreams of sci-fi writers and enthusiasts is the idea of time travel. The kind you’re probably thinking of (the physical kind) is still very firmly situated in the realm of fiction, but humans do have a remarkable ability to whisk themselves back into the past thanks to a process known as “mental time travel.” This remarkable ability is a key feature of human cognition (though, not necessarily exclusive to us), and the idea describes how our minds can seemingly reconstruct the past while forming conceptions about the future.
Related Story Scars in Our Universe Could Unlock Time Travel
Now, a new study from a team of German scientists at Regensburg University has shown that using “mental time travel” techniques can actually enhance the brain’s ability to recall memories, especially in the short term. The rate of “forgetting” isn’t linear—details of a memory will quickly be forgotten over days or weeks, but less and less of the memory is lost over longer periods. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , wanted to test whether mental time travel could stave off this rapid decline in memory retention.
To test this hypothesis, the authors selected 1,216 participants (split into four groups) to undergo two memory experiments. The first experiment involved remembering a word list while the second focused on a particular passage. One of the four groups was tasked with simply recalling the information at four-hour, 24-hour, and 7-day intervals. The other groups used various forms of context reinstatement—such as recalling contextual details (thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc…) of the time the memory was encoded or looking at a small subset of the information (known as “selective retrieval”)—to see if the recall displayed any evidence of greater accuracy.
They found that these contextual reinstatements did improve recall accuracy, especially within 4-hour and 24-hour periods. Remembering emotions restored memories with 70 percent accuracy at four hours and 59 percent at 24 hours, while selective retrieval restored memories with 84 percent and 68 percent accuracy, respectively. (Both techniques were improvements of the group with no context reinstatement.) However, at 7-day recall, things didn’t look quite so rosy. Triggering emotions didn’t improve any noticeable recall, and selective retrieval only delivered 31 percent of the memory.
Related Story Is Déjà Vu Really All In Your Head?
The researchers liken this forget-recall cycle to a kind of Sisyphean task—a reference to the Ancient Greek tale of Sisyphus who was forever destined to roll a boulder up a hill. Within a 24-hour period, mental time travel could return the mind to a similar state as the original encoding, but the process of forgetting remained similar.
“This picture of a Sisyphus-like resurrection of memories contrasts with the idea that context reinstatement as induced by mental time travel is a transient contextual phenomenon,” the authors wrote. “If transient in character, the induced enhancement effect should have vanished shortly after the reinstatement attempts, and the memories’ retrievability quickly become indistinguishable from the retrievability when previous reinstatement attempts were missing.”
Of course, the variety of memories extends far beyond recalling certain facts and figures, so this process could look different when trying to rejuvenate a particular strong or emotive memory. Bur for now, even though mental time travel does allow us to reinforce recent memory, the process of forgetting is always there, waiting once again to start us rolling the rock back up that hill.
A Study Says Your Brain Can Travel Through Time. Here’s What It Does to Your Memory.
A new study shows that employing certain techniques—known as “mental time travel”—can improve recall of a memory. The effects of these techniques wane severely after 24 hours, showing that rejuvenating memories this way is still subject to the inevitable process of forgetting. Researchers liken this forget-recall cycle to the Sisyphean task of Sisyphus who was forever destined to roll a boulder up a hill. Within a 24-hour period, mental time travel could return the mind to a similar state as the original encoding, but the process of Forgetting remained similar, the authors wrote. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , wanted to test whether mental timeTravel could stave off this rapid decline in memory retention. The authors liken it to a kind of Sisysphus-like task.
Although our lives feel filled with both wonderful and painful memories, for the most part, they’re mostly just a long process of forgetting.
A new study shows that employing certain techniques—known as “mental time travel”—can improve recall of that memory.
However, the effects of these techniques wane severely after 24 hours, showing that rejuvenating memories this way is still subject to the inevitable process of forgetting.
One of the many dreams of sci-fi writers and enthusiasts is the idea of time travel. The kind you’re probably thinking of (the physical kind) is still very firmly situated in the realm of fiction, but humans do have a remarkable ability to whisk themselves back into the past thanks to a process known as “mental time travel.” This remarkable ability is a key feature of human cognition (though, not necessarily exclusive to us), and the idea describes how our minds can seemingly reconstruct the past while forming conceptions about the future.
Related Story Scars in Our Universe Could Unlock Time Travel
Now, a new study from a team of German scientists at Regensburg University has shown that using “mental time travel” techniques can actually enhance the brain’s ability to recall memories, especially in the short term. The rate of “forgetting” isn’t linear—details of a memory will quickly be forgotten over days or weeks, but less and less of the memory is lost over longer periods. The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) , wanted to test whether mental time travel could stave off this rapid decline in memory retention.
To test this hypothesis, the authors selected 1,216 participants (split into four groups) to undergo two memory experiments. The first experiment involved remembering a word list while the second focused on a particular passage. One of the four groups was tasked with simply recalling the information at four-hour, 24-hour, and 7-day intervals. The other groups used various forms of context reinstatement—such as recalling contextual details (thoughts, feelings, sensations, etc…) of the time the memory was encoded or looking at a small subset of the information (known as “selective retrieval”)—to see if the recall displayed any evidence of greater accuracy.
They found that these contextual reinstatements did improve recall accuracy, especially within 4-hour and 24-hour periods. Remembering emotions restored memories with 70 percent accuracy at four hours and 59 percent at 24 hours, while selective retrieval restored memories with 84 percent and 68 percent accuracy, respectively. (Both techniques were improvements of the group with no context reinstatement.) However, at 7-day recall, things didn’t look quite so rosy. Triggering emotions didn’t improve any noticeable recall, and selective retrieval only delivered 31 percent of the memory.
Related Story Is Déjà Vu Really All In Your Head?
The researchers liken this forget-recall cycle to a kind of Sisyphean task—a reference to the Ancient Greek tale of Sisyphus who was forever destined to roll a boulder up a hill. Within a 24-hour period, mental time travel could return the mind to a similar state as the original encoding, but the process of forgetting remained similar.
“This picture of a Sisyphus-like resurrection of memories contrasts with the idea that context reinstatement as induced by mental time travel is a transient contextual phenomenon,” the authors wrote. “If transient in character, the induced enhancement effect should have vanished shortly after the reinstatement attempts, and the memories’ retrievability quickly become indistinguishable from the retrievability when previous reinstatement attempts were missing.”
Of course, the variety of memories extends far beyond recalling certain facts and figures, so this process could look different when trying to rejuvenate a particular strong or emotive memory. Bur for now, even though mental time travel does allow us to reinforce recent memory, the process of forgetting is always there, waiting once again to start us rolling the rock back up that hill.
Source: https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/health/a65555540/mental-time-travel-memories/