Time is just a memory (2024)

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Published: 14 January 2019

EPISODIC MEMORY

Matthew L. Shapiro ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-3350-9458¹

Nature Neuroscience volume22,pages 151–153 (2019)Cite this article

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Experience unfolds continuously in time, but we remember discrete sequences of events. In this issue of Nature Neuroscience, Montchal et al. describe brain activity patterns that predict how well people remember precisely when recent events occurred. Converging evidence suggests that hom*ologous neural machinery structures temporal representations in rats and people.

Despite the continuous flow of experience, we remember episodes¹: linked event sequences analogous to spatial trajectories². Remembering episodes requires circuits in the medial temporal lobes (MTL), including the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex (EC)³. EC cell loss detected in victims of Alzheimer’s disease is associated with memory impairments⁴, for example, people forgetting where they parked the car recently. Disrupting EC function also impairs recent memory in rats⁵, suggesting that remembering events in place and time depends on hom*ologous neural mechanisms across species.

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