Future recall: your mind can slip through time.

Imagine your next vacation. You are relaxing on a beach, waves lapping at the shore, a cool breeze wafting through the trees and the sun caressing your skin. Fill in the details. What else do you see? Now, remember yesterday's commute. Again, a picture emerges. You are on the train or in your car, or maybe just wandering from your kitchen to your desk. Can you remember what you were wearing? Perhaps you have forgotten that part already.

Without breaking sweat, you can hurtle yourself backwards or forwards in time in your mind's eye - what is known as "mental time travel". One of these visions really happened and the other was fantasy, yet the act of conjuring them up probably felt very similar. It's as if, embedded somewhere in your brain, there is a time machine that can take you forwards and backwards at will...

Complete article in the current issue of New Scientist.
24 March 2007
Magazine issue 2596