Neural pathways in the brain that enable 'mental time travel' through experiences are discovered

Neural pathways in the brain's hippocampus, a complex structure embedded deep into temporal lobe, enables humans to time travel through life memories, a new study reveals. A team of neuroscientists, Led by researchers at the Brain and Cognition Research Center (CerCo) at the French National Centre for Scientific Research, found these neurons, or time cells, fire during specific moments and may contribute to memory by encoding information about the time and order of events. While monitoring brain activity in an experiment, researchers said they were able to decode different moments in time based on the activity of the entire group of neurons. Along with finding this complex process in the brain, the results bring hope to those with conditions that affect memory and the ability to process time, including Alzheimer's and Dementia, as scientists could soon find a way to treat the neural pathway. Leila Reddy, a neuroscientist who led the research, told VICE: 'The hippocampus is important for judging the temporal order of events (among other things), and damage to the hippocampus can result in an impairment of memory for temporal order (for example remembering the order of a list of items).