Fellow travellers in cognitive evolution: Co-evolution of working memory and mental time travel?

Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
Dorothea DereEkrem Dere

Abstract

Humans spend the lion's share of their mental life either in their personal past or an anticipated or imagined future. This type of mental state is known as mental time travel. It is perhaps the most sophisticated and fitness-promoting cognition that has evolved in humans and with some reservation in animals. We have proposed that working memory capacity and the complexity of executive functions within working memory might limit the authenticity with which past events are reconstructed and anticipated or imagined future scenarios are constructed. In the present article, we discuss the possibility of a co-evolution between working memory capacity, complexity of executive functions available in the working memory workspace, and mental time travel abilities across species. We further assume that a complex working memory system can be constructed with quite different brains and conclude that the advanced cognitive function of thinking about the past and the future might not be a privilege of the mammalian brain.

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Citations

Aug 28, 2020·Reviews in the Neurosciences·Dorothea DereEkrem Dere
Oct 7, 2020·Journal of Neuroscience Methods·Ana Paula de Castro AraujoFlávio Freitas Barbosa
Nov 5, 2019·Behavioural Brain Research·Rebecca J MelroseAmy M Jimenez
Jul 19, 2020·Neuroscience Research·Satoshi HirataYuji Ikegaya
Oct 5, 2021·Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences·Héctor M ManriqueNichola Raihani

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