The complex nature of willpower and conceptual mapping of its normative significance in research on stress, addiction, and dementia

2021 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
Author(s):  
Veljko Dubljević ◽  
Shevaun D. Neupert
Keyword(s):  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Complex Nature ◽  
Coping With Stress ◽  
Conceptual Mapping ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Normative Significance

Abstract Willpower (as suppression, resolve, and habit) has ramifications for autonomy and mental time-travel. Autonomy presupposes mature powers of volition and the capacity to anticipate future events and consequences of one's actions. Ainslie's study is useful to clarify basic autonomy in addiction and dementia. Furthermore, we show how our study on coping with stress can be applied to suppression and resolve.

The mental time travel continuum: on the architecture, capacity, versatility and extension of the mental bridge into the past and future

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (4) ◽  
pp. 421-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
Prescott Breeden ◽  
Dorothea Dere ◽  
Armin Zlomuzica ◽  
Ekrem Dere
Keyword(s):  
Working Memory ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Memory Model ◽  
Processing Capacity ◽  
High Complexity ◽  
The Past ◽  
Decision Making Processes ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Working Memory Model

AbstractMental time travel (MTT) is the ability to remember past events and to anticipate or imagine events in the future. MTT globally serves to optimize decision-making processes, improve problem-solving capabilities and prepare for future needs. MTT is also essential in providing our concept of self, which includes knowledge of our personality, our strengths and weaknesses, as well as our preferences and aversions. We will give an overview in which ways the capacity of animals to perform MTT is different from humans. Based on the existing literature, we conclude that MTT might represent a quantitative rather than qualitative entity with a continuum of MTT capacities in both humans and nonhuman animals. Given its high complexity, MTT requires a large processing capacity in order to integrate multimodal stimuli during the reconstruction of past and/or future events. We suggest that these operations depend on a highly specialized working memory subsystem, ‘the MTT platform’, which might represent a necessary additional component in the multi-component working memory model by Alan Baddeley.

Has mental time travel really affected human culture?

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 326-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alex Mesoudi
Keyword(s):  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cultural Evolution ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Human Culture ◽  
Common Criticism ◽  
Future Events

AbstractSuddendorf & Corballis (S&C) claim that mental time travel has significantly affected human cultural change. This echoes a common criticism of theories of Darwinian cultural evolution: that, whereas evolution is blind, culture is directed by people who can foresee and plan for future events. Here I argue that such a claim is premature, and more rigorous tests of S&C's claim are needed.

Mental time travel sickness and a Bayesian remedy

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 323-324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Hegdé
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Bayesian Estimation ◽  
Estimation Theory ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Past Experience ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
The Past ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Combining Information

AbstractMental time travel is a principled, but a narrow and computationally limiting, implementation of foresight. Future events can be predicted with sufficient specificity without having to have episodic memory of specific past events. Bayesian estimation theory provides a framework by which one can make predictions about specific future events by combining information about various generic patterns in the past experience.

scholarly journals Age-Related Effects on Future Mental Time Travel

2016 ◽  
Vol 2016 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Filomena Anelli ◽  
Elisa Ciaramelli ◽  
Shahar Arzy ◽  
Francesca Frassinetti
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Healthy Aging ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Subjective Time ◽  
Age Related ◽  
Future Events ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Self Reference

Mental time travel (MTT), the ability to travel mentally back and forward in time in order to reexperience past events and preexperience future events, is crucial in human cognition. As we move along life, MTT may be changed accordingly. However, the relation between re- and preexperiencing along the lifespan is still not clear. Here, young and older adults underwent a psychophysical paradigm assessing two different components of MTT: self-projection, which is the ability to project the self towards a past or a future location of the mental time line, and self-reference, which is the ability to determine whether events are located in the past or future in reference to that given self-location. Aged individuals performed worse in both self-projection to the future and self-reference to future events compared to young individuals. In addition, aging decreased older adults’ preference for personal compared to nonpersonal events. These results demonstrate the impact of MTT and self-processing on subjective time processing in healthy aging. Changes in memory functions in aged people may therefore be related not only to memory per se, but also to the relations of memory and self.

scholarly journals An asymmetry in past and future mental time travel following vmPFC damage

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elisa Ciaramelli ◽  
Filomena Anelli ◽  
Francesca Frassinetti
Keyword(s):  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Subjective Time ◽  
Healthy Controls ◽  
Focal Lesions ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events ◽  
Self Reference

Abstract The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in mental time travel toward the past and the future is debated. Here, patients with focal lesions to the vmPFC and brain-damaged and healthy controls mentally projected themselves to a past, present or future moment of subjective time (self-projection) and classified a series of events as past or future relative to the adopted temporal self-location (self-reference). We found that vmPFC patients were selectively impaired in projecting themselves to the future and in recognizing relative-future events. These findings indicate that vmPFC damage hinders the mental processing of and movement toward future events, pointing to a prominent, multifaceted role of vmPFC in future-oriented mental time travel.

The costs of mental time travel

2007 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 317-318 ◽  
Author(s):  
Martin Brüne ◽  
Ute Brüne-Cohrs
Keyword(s):  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Adaptive Behaviour ◽  
Brain Pathology ◽  
Normal Functioning ◽  
Future Events

AbstractA species like ours, whose life critically depends on the ability to foresee, plan, and shape future events, is vulnerable to dysfunction if any one facet contributing to what Suddendorf & Corballis (S&C) call “mental time travel” (MTT) is affected by disease. Although the authors mention brain pathology as a potential cause of disturbed MTT, they fail to explore psychopathological syndromes as a source to better understand the significance of MTT for normal functioning and adaptive behaviour.

scholarly journals Mental time travel and the shaping of the human mind

2009 ◽  
Vol 364 (1521) ◽  
pp. 1317-1324 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Suddendorf ◽  
Donna Rose Addis ◽  
Michael C. Corballis
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Human Mind ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
The Past ◽  
Social Settings ◽  
The World ◽  
Survival And Reproduction ◽  
Conscious Recollection ◽  
Future Events

Episodic memory, enabling conscious recollection of past episodes, can be distinguished from semantic memory, which stores enduring facts about the world. Episodic memory shares a core neural network with the simulation of future episodes, enabling mental time travel into both the past and the future. The notion that there might be something distinctly human about mental time travel has provoked ingenious attempts to demonstrate episodic memory or future simulation in non-human animals, but we argue that they have not yet established a capacity comparable to the human faculty. The evolution of the capacity to simulate possible future events, based on episodic memory, enhanced fitness by enabling action in preparation of different possible scenarios that increased present or future survival and reproduction chances. Human language may have evolved in the first instance for the sharing of past and planned future events, and, indeed, fictional ones, further enhancing fitness in social settings.

scholarly journals Is mental time travel real time travel?

2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Michael Barkasi ◽  
Melanie G. Rosen
Keyword(s):  
Episodic Memory ◽  
Real Time ◽  
Time Travel ◽  
Mental Time Travel ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Direct Realism ◽  
Similar Argument ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Future ◽  
Future Events

Episodic memory (memories of the personal past) and prospecting the future (anticipating events) are often described as mental time travel (MTT). While most use this description metaphorically, we argue that episodic memory may allow for MTT in at least some robust sense. While episodic memory experiences may not allow us to literally travel through time, they do afford genuine awareness of past-perceived events. This is in contrast to an alternative view on which episodic memory experiences present past-perceived events as mere intentional contents. Hence, episodic memory is a way of coming into experiential contact with, or being again aware of, what happened in the past. We argue that episodic memory experiences depend on a causal-informational link with the past events being remembered, and that, assuming direct realism about episodic memory experiences, this link suffices for genuine awareness. Since there is no such link in future prospection, a similar argument cannot be used to show that it also affords genuine awareness of future events. Constructivist views of memory might challenge the idea of memory as genuine awareness of remembered events. We explain how our view is consistent with both constructivist and anti-causalist conceptions of memory. There is still room for an interpretation of episodic memory as enabling genuine awareness of past events, even if it involves reconstruction.

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