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The past and the future in the human brain are linked by the same structures
Last reviewed: 01.07.2025
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The ability to imagine and plan for the future is linked to certain areas of the brain that store general knowledge, says Dr Muireann Irish of the Australian Neuroscience Research Institute. She says dementia patients who can't remember popular songs or famous people, for example, also have trouble imagining themselves in the future.
"We already know that in Alzheimer's disease, memories of the past are erased, but so are thoughts about the future. The study has shown that damage to the areas of the brain that store knowledge of facts and the meaning of things has this effect," says Irish.
Meanwhile, thinking about the future allows you to predict the consequences of your actions. Using fMRI, Dr. Irish decided to visually look at the brains of Alzheimer's patients who have lost their memories of the past, and patients with semantic dementia who have lost the ability to remember facts (semantic memory), but they generally remembered the past well.
It turned out that the second group of patients had the same indicators as the first when it came to thinking about the future, according to a report published in the journal Brain. This means that the same structures are involved in regulation.