Memory is typically viewed as a process that is concerned with the past. One function of memory that has been largely overlooked until recently is its role in allowing individuals to imagine, envisage, or simulate possible future events.

However, a rapidly growing number of recent studies show that imagining possible future events depends on much of the same cognitive and neural machinery as does remembering past events.

The close linkage between remembering the past and imagining the future has potentially important implications for understanding the nature and function of memory…  

- Professor Daniel Schacter [via]