Episodic future thinking: mechanisms and functions

Schacter, Daniel L.; Benoit, Roland G.; Szpunar, Karl K.

doi:10.1016/j.cobeha.2017.06.002

Cited by 565 publications

(474 citation statements)

References 110 publications

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“…This dovetails with recent findings that the anterior hippocampus is preferentially connected to cortical regions implicated in mental simulation tasks (Baldassano et al, ) and is necessary for initiating the construction of complex mental scenarios (Ito & Lee, ; Mack, Love, & Preston, ), which would implicate the anterior hippocampus in a wide variety of functions that require mental representations to guide behavior. Uncovering the nature of this common role of the anterior hippocampus in orchestrating mental representations is a topic worthy of further research, and one that is receiving attention by memory researchers (Schacter, Benoit, & Szpunar, ; Zeidman & Maguire, ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The medial temporal lobe functional connectivity patterns associated with forming different mental representations

Levine

2018

Hippocampus

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The medial temporal lobes (MTL), and more specifically the hippocampus, are critical for forming mental representations of past experiences-autobiographical memories-and for forming other "nonexperienced" types of mental representations, such as imagined scenarios. How the MTL coordinate with other brain areas to create these different types of representations is not well understood. To address this issue, we performed a task-based functional connectivity analysis on a previously published dataset in which fMRI data were collected as participants created different types of mental representations under three conditions. One condition required forming and relating together details from a past event (autobiographical task), another required forming and relating together details of a spatial context (spatial task) and another condition required relating together conceptual/perceptual features of an object (conceptual task). We contrasted the connectivity patterns associated with a functionally defined region in the parahippocampal cortex (PHC) and anatomically defined anterior and posterior hippocampal segments across these tasks. Examining PHC connectivity patterns revealed that the PHC seed was distinctly connected to other MTL structures during the autobiographical task, to posterior parietal regions during the spatial task and to a distributed network of regions for the conceptual task. Examining hippocampal connectivity patterns revealed that the anterior hippocampus was preferentially connected to regions of default mode network during the autobiographical task and to areas implicated in semantic processing for the conceptual task whereas the posterior hippocampus was preferentially connected to medial-posterior regions of the brain during the spatial task. We interpret our findings as evidence that there are MTL-guided networks for forming distinct types of mental representations that align with functional distinctions within the hippocampus.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The medial temporal lobe functional connectivity patterns associated with forming different mental representations

Levine

2018

Hippocampus

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“…Second, direct contrasts using non-rotated PLS analyses were also planned for each specific direction of eCFT—i.e., upward, downward and neutral—in order to explore differences in brain activity for each kind of eCFT as a function of frequent repetition. Given previous results on repetition-related neural activity in episodic future thinking—a related yet importantly different kind of episodic mental simulation (Schacter, Benoit, De Brigard, and Szpunar, 2015; Schacter, Benoit, & Szpunar, 2017)—we expected to find more engagement of core regions of the DN for eCFT simulated once relative to eCFT that were repeatedly simulated. This result would be consistent with a prior study, employing a repetition suppression paradigm (Grill-Spector, Henson, and Martin, 2006), whereby core areas of DN exhibited neural adaptation as a function of repetition during episodic future thinking (Szpunar, St. Jacques, Robbins, Wig, and Schacter, 2014).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 87%

Neural activity associated with repetitive simulation of episodic counterfactual thoughts

et al. 2017

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When people revisit past autobiographical events they often imagine alternative ways in which such events could have occurred. Often these episodic counterfactual thoughts (eCFT) are momentary and fleeting, but sometimes they are simulated frequently and repeatedly. However, little is known about the neural differences between frequently versus infrequently repeated eCFT. The current study explores this issue. In a three-session study, participants were asked to simulate alternative ways positive, negative, and neutral autobiographical memories could have occurred. Half of these eCFT were repeatedly re-simulated while the other half were not. Immediately after, participants were asked to simulate all these eCFT again while undergoing fMRI. A partial least squares analysis on the resultant fMRI data revealed that eCFT that were not frequently repeated preferentially engaged brain regions including middle (BA 21) and superior temporal gyri (BA 38/39), middle (BA 11) and superior frontal gyri (BA 9), and hippocampus. By contrast, frequently repeated eCFT preferentially engaged regions including medial frontal gyri (BA 10), anterior cingulate cortex, insula, and inferior parietal lobule (BA 40). Direct contrasts for each type of eCFT were also conducted. The results of these analyses suggest differential contributions of regions traditionally associated with eCFT, such as BA 10, anterior cingulate cortex, and hippocampus, as a function of kind of eCFT and frequency of repetition. Consequences for future research on eCFT and rumination are considered.

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“…Third, if a simulation is sufficiently important to guide future behavior, a simulation needs to be encoded into memory. According to Addis and Schacter (), distinct anterior and posterior hippocampal regions support these three processes (see also, Schacter, Benoit, & Szpunar, ). The posterior hippocampus supports access to previously experienced details.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Characterizing the role of the hippocampus during episodic simulation and encoding

2017

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The hippocampus has been consistently associated with episodic simulation (i.e., the mental construction of a possible future episode). In a recent study, we identified an anterior-posterior temporal dissociation within the hippocampus during simulation. Specifically, transient simulation-related activity occurred in relatively posterior portions of the hippocampus and sustained activity occurred in anterior portions. In line with previous theoretical proposals of hippocampal function during simulation, the posterior hippocampal activity was interpreted as reflecting a transient retrieval process for the episodic details necessary to construct an episode. In contrast, the sustained anterior hippocampal activity was interpreted as reflecting the continual recruitment of encoding and/or relational processing associated with a simulation. In the present study, we provide a direct test of these interpretations by conducting a subsequent memory analysis of our previously published data to assess whether successful encoding during episodic simulation is associated with the anterior hippocampus. Analyses revealed a subsequent memory effect (i.e., later remembered > later forgotten simulations) in the anterior hippocampus. The subsequent memory effect was transient and not sustained. Taken together, the current findings provide further support for a component process model of hippocampal function during simulation. That is, unique regions of the hippocampus support dissociable processes during simulation, which include the transient retrieval of episodic information, the sustained binding of such information into a coherent episode, and the transient encoding of that episode for later retrieval.

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Episodic future thinking: mechanisms and functions

Cited by 565 publications

References 110 publications

The medial temporal lobe functional connectivity patterns associated with forming different mental representations

The medial temporal lobe functional connectivity patterns associated with forming different mental representations

Neural activity associated with repetitive simulation of episodic counterfactual thoughts

Characterizing the role of the hippocampus during episodic simulation and encoding

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