Mental time travel is the cognitive capacity to re-experience past events or pre-experience anticipated future events in the mind. The concept, associated with researchers like Endel Tulving and Thomas Suddendorf, links episodic memory (recalling specific past experiences) with future-oriented imagination (simulating events that haven't happened yet). The two systems appear to use overlapping brain networks, often involving the hippocampus, medial prefrontal cortex, and default mode network.
Mental time travel often draws heavily on mental imagery across senses—seeing scenes, hearing voices, feeling textures, smelling places. Research suggests people with aphantasia may experience mental time travel differently: episodic memory and prospection still occur, but with less sensory vividness and more semantic, fact-based content. This is one example of how variations in voluntary imagery shape the felt quality of internal experience without preventing the underlying cognitive function.