Is There Something Like That for Imagining the Future?

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If you try and meditate for even just a few minutes, the brain does tend to drift into thoughts about past and future. And this has led to many people arguing that it's almost a part of what comprises the brain's default mode. The psychedelics do not increase activity in those visualizations, but decrease the effectiveness of the damping mechanism.

One of the most powerful of all human capacities is the ability to imagine ourselves in hypothetical situations at different times. We can remember the past, but also conjure up possible futures that haven’t yet happened. This simple ability underlies our capability to organize socially and make contracts with other people. Today’s guest, psychologist Adam Bulley, argues that it’s the primary feature that makes us recognizably human, as he argues in the new book The Invention of Tomorrow: A Natural History of Foresight (with Thomas Suddendorf and Jonathan Redshaw).

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Adam Bulley received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Queensland. He is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the Brain and Mind Centre and School of Psychology, The University of Sydney, and the Department of Psychology at Harvard University.

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