"Mental time travel"....

[Dr Mordrid]

is how they're discribing how memories are retreived;

http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/051222_mental_brain.html

To recall memories, your brain travels back in time via the ultimate Google search, according to a new study in which scientists found they can monitor the activity and actually predict what you'll think of next.

The work bolsters the validity of a longstanding hypothesis that the human brain takes itself back to the state it was in when a memory was first formed.

The psychologist Endel Tulving dubbed this process "mental time travel."

Dr. Mordrid

[schmosef]

Whenever I'm trying to remember something in detail I always try to take myself back to those events and imagine them happening again.

[Nowhere]

And for a long time it was "known" that we remember best things which happened when we were in similar mood/similar circumstances to the present ones.

[GNEP]

Actually, this lines up with the best explanation I've heard of for when one gets a sense of deja-vu (sorry, can't be arsed to do the accents).

IIRC, the experience you are having now (i.e. a minute ago) gets "filed" in your mind where older memories are usually put. So that immediately you have a sense of "I've been here before," even though it is not actually the case, you are convinced it is. Wierd feeling, anyway.

[Dr Mordrid]

Nahhh....it's really that you're trapped in the Matrix

Dr. Mordrid

[Claymonkey]

I must admit I'd like to learn kung fu in 5 seconds