In an attempt to understand whether human beings are they only species able to mentally "time travel" to both the past and the future, researchers from the Ruhr-Universitaet-Bochum have created a new theoretical model that examines this issue; the researchers believe that to a certain extent, animals do have this same capacity. Their model suggests a relationship between episodic memory - memories of places, events and locations - and mental time travel and breaks the process down into various components.
"Component one are memory traces from episodic memory. That means: fairly accurate representations of personally experienced episodes, where each trace represents a particular experience, i.e. is very specific," Sen Cheng, first author of the study, said in a press release.
The researchers say that the second component is the ability to create mental scenarios, which comprises of complex representations of past, present or expected situations that can be integrated into larger contexts and reflected upon. For example, after misplacing a key, someone mentally travels back to the locations and situations where they still had the key.
Using previously published experimental studies, the researchers compared the results with their model in order to determine if animals are capable of mental time travel and determined that animals do not have the ability.
"Some animals indeed appear to possess episodic memory. There is, however, no evidence that they are able to construct, reflect and compare different future scenarios like humans are," said Cheng. "We therefore don't believe that animals are capable of mental time travel.".
The findings will be published in the Jan. 2016 issue of Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews.
