Neural substrates of envisioning the future

Abstract

The ability to envision specific future episodes is a ubiquitous mental phenomenon that has seldom been discussed in the neuroscience literature. In this study, subjects underwent functional MRI while using event cues (e.g., Birthday) as a guide to vividly envision a personal future event, remember a personal memory, or imagine an event involving a familiar individual. Two basic patterns of data emerged. One set of regions (e.g., within left lateral premotor cortex; left precuneus; right posterior cerebellum) was more active while envisioning the future than while recollecting the past (and more active in both of these conditions than in the task involving imagining another person). These regions appear similar to those emerging from the literature on imagined (simulated) bodily movements. A second set of regions (e.g., bilateral posterior cingulate; bilateral parahippocampal gyrus; left occipital cortex) demonstrated indistinguishable activity during the future and past tasks (but greater activity in both tasks than the imagery control task); similar regions have been shown to be important for remembering previously encountered visual-spatial contexts. Hence, differences between the future and past tasks are attributed to differences in the demands placed on regions that underlie motor imagery of bodily movements, and similarities in activity for these two tasks are attributed to the reactivation of previously experienced visual-spatial contexts. That is, subjects appear to place their future scenarios in well known visual-spatial contexts. Our results offer insight into the fundamental and little-studied capacity of vivid mental projection of oneself in the future.

Fig. 1.

Cortical regions exhibiting activity differences and similarities during past and future thought. (A–D) Percent signal change for representative regions from Table 1 showing a significant interaction such that imagining of future events (SF) led to greater activation over the 10-modeled timepoints than did recollecting oneself in the past (SR). Both self-related tasks also led to greater activity than a control task involving imagery of another person participating in similar events (CI). Regions listed in Table 1 but not shown here demonstrate patterns similar to those shown in the figure. (E–H) Percent signal change for selected regions from Table 2 showing a statistically indistinguishable pattern of activity across time while subjects envisioned their personal future (SF) and recollected the past (SR) in response to a series of event cues (e.g., Birthday). Imagining a familiar individual in similar scenarios (CI) resulted in a pattern of activity different from both the past and future tasks. Regions listed in Table 2 but not shown here demonstrate patterns similar to those shown in the figure.