Time and Episodic Memory: Neuropsychology Meets Philosophy

时间和情景记忆：神经心理学遇上哲学

• 批准号: 2146778
• 负责人: Carl Craver
• 金额: $ 28.26万
• 依托单位: Washington University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2022
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2022-09-01 至 2023-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2146778&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Time; Episodic; Memory; Neuropsychology; Meets

This project investigates how the capacity to remember past personal experiences contributes to the emergence and maintenance of the sense of time. Individuals with episodic amnesia, that is, amnesia for vivid personal past experiences, are modeled in both science and the popular media as trapped in time. This core metaphor shapes our understanding both of what episodic memory is (mental time travel) and of its role in our lives as people (anchoring us in time). Amnesia is seen accordingly as a pathology affecting an individual’s entire subjective temporality, one that undermines their decisions about the future and scuttles all possibility of autonomous living. Our work shows that amnesic individuals are not trapped in time; they are capable of more as moral and practical agents than the trapped-in-time model would lead one to predict. We study temporal cognition in individuals with episodic amnesia to learn how episodic memory is involved in cognition about time. Do individuals with amnesia develop and maintain concepts of the past, present, and future? Do they understand time’s irreversible order or that events can be sequenced earlier to later? Do they care about the difference between the future and the past? Do they discount the value of future rewards, make impulsive choices, or exhibit presentist bias in their practical and moral decisions? Research in our and other labs increasingly reveals that individuals with amnesia are not trapped in time but understand time and its implications well. These findings are transformative for humanists interested in the value of memory in human life, philosophers interested in the source of our knowledge of time, scientists struggling to understand what memory is and how it contributes to our lives as persons, and, finally, to clinicians trying to help people with memory loss live fuller human lives.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

这个项目研究了记忆过去个人经历的能力如何有助于时间感的产生和维持。情节性遗忘症患者，即对过去生动的个人经历的遗忘，在科学和大众媒体中被塑造为被困在时间中。这个核心隐喻塑造了我们对情景记忆是什么（心理时间旅行）及其在我们作为人的生活中的作用（将我们锚定在时间中）的理解。因此，焦虑症被视为一种影响个人整个主观时间性的病理学，它破坏了他们对未来的决定，并破坏了所有自主生活的可能性。 我们的研究表明，健忘症患者并没有被困在时间里;他们作为道德和实践的代理人，比被困在时间里的模型所预测的更有能力。 我们研究情节性遗忘症患者的时间认知，以了解情节记忆如何参与时间认知。患有健忘症的人是否会发展并保持对过去、现在和未来的概念？他们是否理解时间的不可逆转的顺序，或者事件可以从早到晚排序？他们关心未来和过去的区别吗？他们是否低估了未来回报的价值，做出冲动的选择，或者在他们的实际和道德决定中表现出存在主义偏见？我们和其他实验室的研究越来越多地表明，患有健忘症的人并没有被困在时间中，而是很好地理解时间及其含义。这些发现对于那些对记忆在人类生活中的价值感兴趣的人文主义者、对我们时间知识的来源感兴趣的哲学家、努力理解记忆是什么以及它如何对我们作为人的生活做出贡献的科学家来说，都是具有变革性的，最后，该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为是值得支持的，使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估。