CHRONESTHESIA   [ back to Glossary Index ]
Chronesthesia is the mental ability to travel in time, to relive past experiences and imagine future experiences, complete with sights, sounds and emotional responses. Traumatic damage to the right frontal lobe impairs this capacity. A patient studied by the Rotman Research Institute of Toronto, who sustained right frontal lobe damage from a motorcycle crash cannot relive his past, but only describe it "semantically" in a completely detached manner devoid of emotion, and cannot imagine the future. He can recall what happened in a third person sense, but cannot feel or experience the episodes he describes.