How Your Brain Connects the Future to the Past

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From HBR - Jeff Brown and Mark Fenske. We tend to think of memory as a way to revisit past experiences: a vacation in the tropics, a bad business decision, or where you might have put those elusive car keys. Neuroscientists have long believed that the brain's so-called episodic memory circuits are largely involved in remembering past events or occurrences. Neuroimaging studies had even identified parts of the brain that are specifically activated when retrieving information from prior life experiences. These include regions in the prefrontal and medial temporal lobes, as well as more posterior regions such as the retrosplenial cortex. Butrecent studies (pdf)have found a striking overlap between these areas and brain regions that are activated when you think about the future.