Imagination: Function Of Episodic Memory And Ignition

The lecture this week discussed evolution and development. While Darwin believed that natural selection worked with individuals, the synthetic theory states that genes determine all traits that heritable. While the synthetic theory of evolution combined Darwinian evolution and genetics, it chose genes as the only focus of natural selection, hence an organism can be seen as the “vehicle” for genes because they are what create these individuals to deal with the environment to make more genes. So, when approaching the concept of the chicken and the egg and which came first, the synthetic theory would believe the egg came first because it is necessary to create a chicken that will produce more eggs. Natural selection controls genes which create and control individuals that reproduce and pass along the genes to their offspring. The …show more content…
Daniel Schacter’s lecture, “Memory and Imagination: Functions of Episodic Simulation and Retrieval.” Due to my lack of experience and knowledge of the subject, I wasn’t able to comprehend the majority of it. The lecture began with Dr. Schacter introducing and describing episodic memory. Episodic memory is the storage unit for personal memories of events or experiences from the past. Dr. Schacter studied amnesic patients who exhibit an impairment in remembering personal experiences, so their episodic memory deteriorates. Dr. Schacter noticed that these amnesic patients also have a deficit episodic memory begin to fail at imagining future events. When patients recalled personal memories or imagined future events, Dr. Schacter showed that same areas of the brain are activated. The idea that episodic memory influences how we imagine our future plays out shows that we learn from our previous experiences. I never thought about this concept before, but when taking it into consideration, it makes a lot of sense. Our imagination of the future stems from our experiences and the certain information we transduce from that