We humans have been blessed with the ability to remember the past and to envision multiple possible futures. We use these abilities to try to make the world according to our liking. In doing so, we seem to be participating in the ongoing creation of the universe.
It turns out that there appears to be "a surprisingly complete overlap" in the areas of our brains that handle past and future, according to the authors of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academies of Science. Here’s an excerpt from an AFP news report:
"Our findings provide compelling support for the idea that memory and future thought are highly interrelated and help explain why future thought may be impossible without memories," said Karl Szpunar, lead author of the study and a doctoral student in psychology at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
[…]
The finding may explain why people with amnesia, a condition involving various degrees of memory loss, cannot vividly envision themselves in any kind of personal future, even though they can consider the future in an abstract sense, said Kathleen McDermott, a co-author and professor of psychology in the School of Medicine at Washington University.
UPDATE: Scientific American has an online article about the same paper.
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