title: The time machine in our mind.
abstract: This article provides the first comprehensive conceptual account for the imagistic mental machinery that allows us to travel through time--for the time machine in our mind. It is argued that language reveals this imagistic machine and how we use it. Findings from a range of cognitive fields are theoretically unified and a recent proposal about spatialized mental time travel is elaborated on. The following novel distinctions are offered: external versus internal viewing of time; ''watching" time versus projective ''travel" through time; optional versus obligatory mental time travel; mental time travel into anteriority or posteriority versus mental time travel into the past or future; single mental time travel versus nested dual mental time travel; mental time travel in episodic memory versus mental time travel in semantic memory; and ''seeing" versus ''sensing" mental imagery. Theoretical, empirical, and applied implications are discussed.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive and Brain Sciences, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1650, USA. kurtstocker@berkeley.edu
authors.forename: Kurt
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Stocker
mesh_terms: D001921:Brain / Q000502:physiology; D003071:Cognition; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D011939:Mental Recall; D008960:Models, Psychological; D012649:Self Concept; D013995:Time; D013998:Time Perception