Browsing by Subject "Mental time travel"

Now showing 1 - 2 of 2

Open Access
Is external memory memory? biological memory and extended mind
(Elsevier, 2012-09) Michaelian, K. H.
Clark and Chalmers (1998) claim that an external resource satisfying the following criteria counts as a memory: (1) the agent has constant access to the resource; (2) the information in the resource is directly available; (3) retrieved information is automatically endorsed; (4) information is stored as a consequence of past endorsement. Research on forgetting and metamemory shows that most of these criteria are not satisfied by biological memory, so they are inadequate. More psychologically realistic criteria generate a similar classification of standard putative external memories, but the criteria still do not capture the function of memory. An adequate account of memory function, compatible with its evolution and its roles in prospection and imagination, suggests that external memory performs a function not performed by biological memory systems. External memory is thus not memory. This has implications for: extended mind theorizing, ecological validity of memory research, the causal theory of memory.
Open Access
Narrative construction is intact in episodic amnesia
(Elsevier, 2018) Keven, Nazım; Kurczek, J.; Rosenbaum, R. S.; Craver, C. F.
Autobiographical remembering and future imagining overlap in their underlying psychological and neurological mechanisms. The hippocampus and surrounding regions within the medial temporal lobes (MTL), known for their role in forming and maintaining autobiographical episodic memories, are also thought to play an essential role in fictitious and future constructions. Amnesic individuals with bilateral hippocampal damage cannot reconstruct their past personal experiences and also have severe deficits in the ability to construct coherent fictitious or future narratives. However, it is not known whether this impairment reflects a failure to generate details from autobiographical episodic memory to populate personal narratives or an inability to bind such details into coherent narratives. We show that four individuals with hippocampal damage and episodic amnesia can construct narratives when the relevant details of the story are provided in a picture book and that their narratives maintain overall coherence on several measures. These findings indicate that individuals with hippocampal damage can bind details into coherent narratives when details are available to them. We conclude that the hippocampal system instead likely plays a role in the generation of details from which narratives are constructed.