A pigeon might learn to associate your face with food, but it probably can't
remember your last meeting in the way you might be able to recall details of
your last trip to the park. It is an important distinction, because episodic memory is
thought to allow us to imagine and plan for the future. This skill, known as
mental time travel, was long thought to be unique to humans, but there are now
some signs that a handful of other species might also be able to escape the
present.
Some of the most convincing evidence comes from Nicola Clayton and Sergio Correia at the University of Cambridge, who have shown that western scrub jays can learn from their experiences to anticipate the actions of other birds. If one bird knows that another is watching it bury its food, for instance, it will later move the stash, presumably to prevent it from being stolen. But they will only do this if they have previously stolen food themselves - suggesting that they were drawing on their memories while forming the plan. Similar studies have suggested that bonobos and orang-utans are also capable of mental time travel..
Initially, the work attracted a lot of scepticism from researchers like Michael Corballis at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who believed that the results could be explained by a complex kind of classical conditioning, for instance. But some recent work has begun to change his mind. He points to a study of activity in the hippocampuses of rats, which suggests that they replay their movements through a maze, and may even imagine future paths that they could take. He is also impressed by Santino, a chimp at Furuvik Zoo in Sweden that collects and hides rocks to throw at visitors, using premeditation that would rely on episodic memory..
- More Here
Some of the most convincing evidence comes from Nicola Clayton and Sergio Correia at the University of Cambridge, who have shown that western scrub jays can learn from their experiences to anticipate the actions of other birds. If one bird knows that another is watching it bury its food, for instance, it will later move the stash, presumably to prevent it from being stolen. But they will only do this if they have previously stolen food themselves - suggesting that they were drawing on their memories while forming the plan. Similar studies have suggested that bonobos and orang-utans are also capable of mental time travel..
Initially, the work attracted a lot of scepticism from researchers like Michael Corballis at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, who believed that the results could be explained by a complex kind of classical conditioning, for instance. But some recent work has begun to change his mind. He points to a study of activity in the hippocampuses of rats, which suggests that they replay their movements through a maze, and may even imagine future paths that they could take. He is also impressed by Santino, a chimp at Furuvik Zoo in Sweden that collects and hides rocks to throw at visitors, using premeditation that would rely on episodic memory..
- More Here
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