Tuesday, January 2, 2007
How the brain forecasts
Neuroscientists report that the same regions of the brain are used for forecasting the future as recalling the past. In the Washington University study, subjects underwent fMRI brain scans as they were asked to remember, say, a BBQ they attended and also imagine one in the future. The fMRI enabled the scientists to identify which specific brain regions lit up during both tasks. From Scientific American:
"...To effectively generate a plausible image of the future, subjects reactivate images (e.g. visual-spatial context)," the researchers write in a paper published online January 1 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA. "Postexperiment questionnaires indicate that while envisioning the future, subjects tended to place those images in the context of familiar places (e.g. home, school) and familiar people (e.g. friends)." In other words, to imagine the future, we remember the past and put our projections in that context.Link
posted by David Pescovitz at 09:41:48 AM permalink | Other blogs' comments
