BROASA-8v1.pdf — page 18

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Lajos Brons
Vol. 28
avoiding past mistakes and planning for the future as anyone else). The only way
in which supposed explanations of the evolution of episodic memory make sense as
explanations thereof is if it is assumed that only episodic memory has the evolution-
ary relevant features, and thus none of the varieties other than (a) and (i) in table 3
exist.
In addition to implicit or explicit deﬁnitions of episodic memory as either (i) or
everything but (a), some approaches opt for another variety. Both Tulving’s (1972)
original what/where/when conceptualization and Cheng and Werning’s (2016) recent
deﬁnition of episodic memory as involving a “temporally explicit simulation” of some
previously experienced event ignore the aﬀective dimension, for example. If episodic
memory just records the what/where/when of an experienced event then it is the
union of varieties (e), (f), (h), and (i) as any of those varieties is suﬃcient for that.
The kind of replay or re-experiencing involved in a “temporally explicit simulation”,
on the other hand, would imply that episodic memory is necessarily modal and thus
exclude (e) and (h), and only include (f) and (i). However, Cheng and Werning sug-
gest that the reliving of an episode (i.e. the “temporally explicit simulation”) may be
unconscious, and that is a potential complication that doesn’t readily ﬁt into table 3.
It is not entirely clear what Cheng and Werning’s suggestion is supposed to en-
tail, but presumably the idea is that there could be unconscious (modal) re-living
with a conscious amodal counterpart. In that case, conceptualization or “semanti-
zation” takes place at the time of retrieval. In a sense, the memory is really modal,
but the modal aspect is hidden from the conscious mind. Such crypto-modal memory
contrasts to pseudo-modal memory which is “semanticized” at the time of encoding.
At present there is—as far as I know—no evidence for crypto-modal memory, but
crypto-modal memory could explain the phenomenology of SDAM. In other words,
Cheng and Werning’s suggestion raises an important question: Do people with SDAM
unconsciously re-live previous experiences when they (try to) remember something?
It was already mentioned that there is evidence that aphantasia is not just phe-
nomenal and that aphantasics really use diﬀerent brain areas and really lack imagery.
In other words, aphantasics (probably) do not have unconscious imagery correspond-
ing to and accompanying their conscious thoughts. Given the links between aphan-
tasia and SDAM this suggests that people with SDAM do not unconsciously re-live
episodes either, but it doesn’t prove that. However, in neuroimaging studies, Palombo
and colleagues (2015) found that brain activity that is typical for re-living is absent
in people with SDAM when they try to remember. In other words, there is evidence
that people with SDAM do not unconsciously re-live experiences, and thus do not
have crypto-modal memory13. (However, that people with SDAM do not rely on
13 Given the opacity of mind (Carruthers 2011), it is possible that people with normal
imagery abilities and normal autobiographic memory sometimes make use of some-
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