Time Travel... Through Memory

Chronesthesia, the ability of perform mental time travel, is a controversial area of research. We can travel back in time, for example returning to childhood, through memory. We can generate future events in our minds, the ability of foresight. A different issue is whether these future events will actually take place. The ability to perform time travel is not restricted to humans, great apes can do it too:

Great ape foresight is looking great

How great is great ape foresight?

Great apes can defer exchange: a replication with different results suggesting future oriented behavior

Keeping track of time: evidence for episodic-like memory in great apes

and also birds:

Episodic-like memory during cache recovery by scrub jays

Effects of experience and social context on prospective caching strategies by scrub jays

Can animals recall the past and plan for the future?

Worm holes and avian space-time

This research topic is controversial, no doubt about that:

The evolution of foresight: What is mental time travel, and is it unique to humans?

Behavioural evidence for mental time travel in nonhuman animals

Mental time travel in animals: a challenging question

One thing is clear, authors of time-travel fiction can do it. But, even little children can:

Episodic future thinking in 3- to 5-year-old children: the ability to think of what will be needed from a different point of view

A recent new study looks into the details of mental time travel:

Neural Activity in the Medial Temporal Lobe Reveals the Fidelity of Mental Time Travel

How The Brain Performs 'Mental Time Travel'

A bit older:

Mental time travel - the neurocognitive basis of future thinking

What makes mental time travel possible?

Happy mental time travel! But be careful:

Schizotypy and mental time travel