Exploring temporal navigation in the human brain

Overview & Synopsis

Through "mental time travel", humans can project themselves in the past or in the future, reliving past events or exploring possible future outcomes (Suddendorf and Corballis, 1997; Tulving, 2002). This ability to navigate mental time requires that events be flexibly mapped on an internal temporal coordinate system - a cognitive map, that may be conceptualized as a "mental timeline" (Arzy et al., 2009). Such cognitive maps have been described in spatial navigation, where a hippocampal-entorhinal circuit enable the representation of the self and the landmarks of the environment, thus allowing for the computation of their spatial relations (Moser et al., 2008; Moser et al., 2015). In this circuit, the organization of neural assemblies by hippocampal theta waves (Bragin et al., 1995; Colgin et al., 2009) enable the computation of temporal distances and allow to mentally revisit past locations or project towards future ones, suggesting that this mechanism may also support mental time travel (Buzsáki and Moser, 2013). The main objective of this PhD project is to explore the role of oscillatory activity and hippocampal structures in self-projection in time. For this, we will use state-of-the-art techniques: (1) Lab psychophysics experiment (2) Non-invasive recordings (EEG/MEG), in order to map out the neural networks involved with high temporal resolution. (3) Virtual reality paradigms (combined with EEG/MEG recordings), to emulate a more complex environment design.