Space, Time, and Memory

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Memories are not organized by a single arbitrary dimension, such as mere association. Instead, many
dimensions have been taken to be part of the structure of memory. Of these, space and time stand out:
all personal experience can in principle be indexed by where and when specific events occurred, and
both scientific evidence and common sense suggest that the way we relate different events together in
memory draws on these dimensions. For instance, to remember what one ate for lunch last Thursday,
one might call up a memory of where one was, or retrace the events of the day leading up to lunch.

Some nuts-and-bolts questions arise immediately, starting with whether the spatial or the temporal
dimension is primary. Or rather, do we rely on both equally? Do we represent them separately or
jointly? But there are bigger questions with broad implications: What makes space and time such central
structures in our cognitive world, and what is the conceptual nature of these structures? These
questions are deeply related to one another, though they span multiple fields and methodologies,
touching on philosophy, psychology and neuroscience.

Space, Time, and Memory explores three key questions: first, the role of space and time as structures that organize memory, second, theories of the nature of memory itself that draw on space and time, and finally applications of questions about the structure of memory to debates about perception, decision-making, and artifical intelligence.

Lynn Nadel, Regents Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and Psychology, University of Toronto,Sara Aronowitz, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Toronto

Lynn Nadel is Regents Professor Emeritus of Cognitive Science and Psychology. His work focuses on the functions of the hippocampus in memory and spatial cognition, leading to significant contributions in the study of stress and memory, sleep and memory, memory reconsolidation, and the mental retardation observed in Down syndrome. He has promulgated, with collaborators, two highly influential theories in cognitive neuroscience: the cognitive map theory of hippocampal function, and the multiple trace theory of memory. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences.


Sara Aronowitz is an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto. She studies how memory and imagination contribute to the ability to learn over large timescales and through changing environments. She was previously a professor of philosophy and cognitive science at the University of Arizona. She completed PhD in philosophy at the University of Michigan and a postdoctoral fellowship in Psychology at Princeton University.

1. What has episodic memory got to do with space and time?, Ian Phillips2. Developmental Sequences Constrain Models of the Mind, Nora S. Newcombe & Kim V. Nguyen3. Space, time and memory, György Buzsáki and János Végh4. The Hippocampal Cognitive Map and Episodic Memory, John O'Keefe5. Space, and not Time, Provides the Basic Structure of Memory, Sara Aronowitz and Lynn Nadel6. A Place for the Memory Trace,, Sarah Robins7. Memory, Space, Time, and the Hippocampus, Charan Ranganath8. Coding of space and time for memory function, Michael E. Hasselmo, Jennifer C. Robinson, Patrick A. LaChance, Jacob H. Wilmot, L. Kelton Wilmerding, Samantha Malmberg, Mahir Patel, Quan Do, G. William Chapman9. Simulationism and Memory Traces, Felipe De Brigard10. Can We Perceive the Past?, EJ Green11. Experience Replay Algorithms and the Function of Episodic Memory, Alexandria Boyle12. Memory and Planning in Brains and Machines: Multiscale Predictive Representations, Ida Momennejad