Do We Need the Past to Imagine the Future?

By Kristina Fiore, Staff Writer, MedPage Today Published: January 18, 2010 In several brain imaging studies, similar areas of the hippocampus were activated when patients recalled past events or imagined future ones, Daniel L. Schacter, PhD, of Harvard University, said during a plenary session at the American Psychoanalytic Association meeting here. "Memory can be thought of as a tool used by the brain to allow us to generate predictions and simulations of upcoming events," he said.