A short natural history of mental time travels: a journey still travelled?

Abstract

Tulving's introduction of episodic memory and the metaphor of mental time travel has immensely enriched our understanding of human cognition. However, his focus on human psychology, with limited consideration of evolutionary perspectives, led to the entrenched notion that mental time travel is uniquely human. We contend that adopting a phylogenetic perspective offers a deeper insight into cognition, revealing it as a continuous evolutionary process. Adherence to the uniqueness of pre-defined psychological concepts obstructs a more complete understanding. We offer a concise natural history to elucidate how events that occurred hundreds of millions of years ago have been pivotal for our ability to mentally time travel. We discuss how the human brain, utilizing parts with ancient origins in a networked manner, enables mental time travel. This underscores that episodic memories and mental time travel are not isolated mental constructs but integral to our perception and representation of the world. We conclude by examining recent evidence of neuroanatomical correlates found only in great apes, which show great variability, indicating the ongoing evolution of mental time travel in humans.This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'.

Keywords: cognitive evolution; deep time cognition; episodic memory; mental time travel.