YOUR MEMORIES ARE MADE TO BE RELIABLY UNRELIABLE.

We might well curse our memories when they let us down. But we might also be shocked by the results of the decades of work by the psychologist Elizabeth Loftus showing how easy it is to implant false memories into our minds, whether of kissing giant frogs or meeting Bugs Bunny at Disney World Manchester. We might worry about what it means for justice if an eyewitness can be so easily swayed by a leading question.

But there’s a good reason for the fallibility of our memories. It allows us to time-travel mentally, at will, in the opposite direction — into the future.

After more than a century of systematic research into the way our memories work, psychologists are turning their attention to the way we imagine what’s coming. The most significant finding is the degree to which future thinking relies on our memory for the past.

So “Forward, into the past!” isn’t just a slogan, then.