| Remembering the Future |
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| Written by Suzann Kale | |
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The parts of the brain that imagine the future are the same parts that remember the past.
Neuroscientists have just discovered that the exact same parts of the brain used to imagine a future event are used when a past experience is recalled. According to scientist Dr. Ray Kurzweil, "This means that the brain apparently predicts the course of future events by imagining them taking place much like similar past."1
Earlier research built a foundation by finding that when we remember an experience, we use a different part of the brain than we used during the original experience itself. Randy L. Buckner, a scientist with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and his colleagues Steven E. Peterson2, and Mark E. Wheeler3, used Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) to determine the blood flow patterns to different areas of the brain during different thoughts. They saw that although memory reactivates either the visual or auditory cortex, the specific spots in these areas were not the same as the parts used in the original experience.
This "suggests that during remembering, the brain areas reactivated do not include those involved with the earliest levels of perception," Dr. Buckner told Scientific American4, "but rather selectively rely on high-level brain areas that already contain rather complex representations of sensory information."
Flash forward, through research by many scientists and institutions, to 2007. Neuroscientists Karl Szpunar, Jason Watson, and Kathleen McDermott5 studied the blood flow to certain areas of the brain using advanced scanning techniques, along with interviews and other checks and balances. And they proved - for the first time - that when we envision our futures, we refer back to our past. We place our projections in the context of our past.6
 "...to effectively generate a plausible image of the future," the scientists wrote in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, "subjects reactivate images (e.g., visual-spatial context)... Postexperiment questionnaires indicate that while invisioning the future, subjects tended to place those images in the context of familiar places (e.g., home, school) and familiar people (e.g., friends)."7
How can this help us in daily life? Just the awareness of this autonomic biological process tells us that our basic nature is to think in familiar, circular thought patterns. Knowing that, we can make the conscious choice to think in new ways.
These and other intriguing mind mysteries and future casts can be found at NanoFuture2030, a blog by the animator and co-designer of the Nanofactory movie.
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posted Jan.4, 2007
1 from KurzweilAI.net Daily Newsletter 1/4/07
2 Washington University in St. Louis
3 Washington University in St. Louis
4 ScientificAmerican.com, Jan.4, 2007, from "Where Memories Are Made" by Kristin Leutwyler, Sept.26, 2000.
5 all from Washington University in St. Louis
6 from ScientificAmerican.com, Jan.2, 2007, "Back to the Future: How the Brain 'Sees' the Future" by David Biello
7 published online Jan.1, 2006
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