Just Because: 'The Future of the Mind,' Part 2

As I predicted in my earlier post about this book (http://somanyinterestingthings.blogspot.com/2014/05/just-because-future-of-mind-part-1.html), I have been finding many gems among its pages and would like to share another with you (my prediction, of course, being a perfect illustration of the following theory in action). This one comes from pages 113-114:

   ... neurobiologist Dr. James McGaugh of the University of California at Irvine says, "The purpose of memory is to predict the future," which raises an interesting possibility. Perhaps long-term memory evolved because it was useful for simulating the future. In other words, the fact that we can remember back into the distant past is due to the demands and advantages of simulating the future.
   Indeed, brain scans done by scientists at Washington University in St. Louis indicate that areas used to recall memories are the same as those involved in simulating the future. In particular, the link between the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus lights up when a person is engaged in planning for the future and remembering the past. In some sense, the brain is trying to "recall the future," drawing
upon memories of the past in order to determine how something will evolve into the future. This may also explain the curious fact that people who suffer from amnesia ... are often unable to visualize what they will be doing in the future or even the very next day.
   "You might look at it as mental time travel ~ the ability to take thoughts about ourselves and project them either into the past or into the future," says Dr. Kathleen McDermott of Washington University. She also notes that their study proves a "tentative answer to a longstanding question regarding the evolutionary usefulness of memory. It may just be that the reason we can recollect the past in vivid detail is that this set of processes is important for being able to envision ourselves in future scenarios. This ability to envision the future has clear and compelling adaptive significance." For an animal, the past is largely a waste of precious resources, since it gives them little evolutionary advantage. But simulating the future, given the lessons of the past, is an essential reason why humans became intelligent.

   Of course, the mouse we saved from our cat last night and who, unfortunately, was caught again this morning would have benefited mightily from being able to simulate a future scenario based on the memory of a past experience ...