Seeing the Past and Future with Our Own Two Eyes

Source: LhcCoutinho / Pixabay

When we mentally picture an experience from our past or future, it’s not uncommon for us to say that we see that event unfolding “in our mind’s eye.” We use this expression figuratively, of course, meaning that we are picturing a past or future event in our minds as if we were seeing it with our eyes.

A recent body of research, however, reveals that the expression may not be as figurative as we think. It turns out that the figurative “mind’s eye” gets a lot of help from our literal physical eyes when setting the scene for a past or future experience.

Setting the Stage

Any time we remember something that happened to us in the past or imagine something we might do in the future, that past or future event almost invariably takes place in a specific physical setting or spatial context. Our memories, not surprisingly, take place in the same location they did when we actually lived them.

Imagined future events, which have not yet taken place because they are, well, in the future, are nonetheless also set in specific physical settings based on places where similar past experiences were set. If you’re about to walk into an important meeting in a venue you’ve never seen before, for example, your mental visualization of the meeting as you prepare for it will likely be set in the familiar conference room back at your home office.

“Seeing” Our Past

While the mental images of places we have been and places we imagine ourselves being exist inside our head, they are constructed with the help of the two flesh-and-blood orbs gazing out from the front of it. Several studies have shown that when we retrieve a memory of a past experience and picture the setting in which the event took place, our eyes spontaneously move around as if we are actually looking at the setting we are remembering.

When presented with the image of a physical setting on a computer screen and then later asked to describe the setting while looking at a blank screen, participants in the studies spontaneously moved their eyes to parts of the screen where the features they were describing had been located when the image was present. These findings suggest that just as eye movement was a part of the encoding process when the memory of a setting was formed, a similar pattern of eye movement helps to mentally reconstruct the setting in memory retrieval—a process called “gaze-based reinstatement.”

“Seeing” Our Future

A study recently conducted at Harvard attempted to extend these findings on events we have experienced in the past to events we imagine happening in the future. Participants in the study were asked to recall and describe highly familiar locations and then imagine future events taking place in those locations while looking at a blank screen. An eye-tracking device recorded the participants’ eye movements in both the recall and the future simulation trials—the initial description of the location and the imagined future event occurring there—and the two data sets were compared for similarity.

Consistent with the researchers’ hypothesis, a comparison of eye movements during the simulation to eye movements during recall of the same location showed “significantly more evidence for the cued location than other non-cued locations.” Participants visually scanned the two spatial contexts with the same eye patterns, indicating that they were “seeing” the same scene in each case, even though they were only looking at a blank screen.

To examine the role that such gaze reinstatement plays in future simulations, the researchers included a series of trials in which participants were not allowed to move their eyes freely but were required to keep their gaze fixed on a cross located in the center of the screen. Consistent with their prediction that “eye movements support future imagining by reinstating spatial context from memory,” restricting participants’ eye movement significantly reduced their subjective feelings of vividness in the future simulations.

In the trials where participants were allowed to move their eyes freely, location-specific gaze reinstatement during the simulations was predictive of the number of internal details (sights, sounds, feelings relevant to the memory or simulation) produced by the participants.

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The findings of the study suggest that eye movements support the simulation of future events by reactivating a spatial context from memory. The researchers further speculate that the reinstated spatial context may act as a “scaffold” upon which additional details in a simulation can be constructed and elaborated on. In other words, when we call a physical scene up in our minds, whether in a memory from the past or an imagined event in the future, our physical eyes assist our mind’s eye in bringing that scene to life.

So the next time you’re envisioning yourself delivering a speech in front of a large audience, negotiating with a salesperson for a new car, or playing in a tennis tournament, let your eyes wander and your mind follow as you imagine the scene. It might not affect the outcome of the event, but it’ll give you a much clearer picture of how it might unfold along the way.