Abstracts Presented at The International Neuropsychological Society, Finnish Neuropsychological Society, Joint Mid-Year Meeting July 29-August 1, 2009 Helsinki, Finland & Tallinn, Estonia WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON, JULY 29, 2009 Presidential Address: ture episodes as well as past ones, and even fictional ones. Mental time Time, Language, and the Human Brain travel provides us with many of the properties of mind we consider uniquely human, including a sense of self through time, the ability to plan in episodic detail, and perhaps even religion. The sharing of episodic INS President: Michael Corballis information, whether past, planned, or imaginary, is also adaptive, help- ing establish group identity and common goals—we are slaves to sto- ries, novels, plays, movies, television soaps, and gossip. Such sharing 4:45–5:30 p.m. may explain the evolution of language itself, and why language exhibits such properties as symbolic representations of elements of non-present M. CORBALLIS. Time, Language, and the Human Brain. events, time and place markers, and combinatorial rules. Both brain imaging and studies of amnesia reveal extensive neural over- Correspondence: Michael Corballis, Dept of Psychology, University of lap in brain areas involved in remembering the past and imagining the Auckland, Private Bag 92019, Auckland 92019, New Zealand. E-mail: future. Episodic memory can therefore be regarded as part of a more
[email protected] general system for mental time travel, involving the construction of fu- THURSDAY MORNING, JULY 30, 2009 Paper Session 1: healthy older adults did not show this effect. Long-term recognition was Memory in Clinical Conditions superior for neutral pictures in both groups.