Medial Temporal Lobe Contributions to Episodic Future Thinking: Scene Construction or Future Projection?

ABSTRACT: Previous research has shown that the medial temporal lobes (MTL) are more strongly engaged when individuals think about the future than about the present, leading to the suggestion that future projection drives MTL engagement. However, future thinking tasks often involve scene processing, leaving open the alternative possibility that scene-construction demands, rather than future projection, are responsible for the MTL differences observed in prior work. This study explores this alternative account. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we directly contrasted MTL activity in 1) high scene-construction and low scene-construction imagination conditions matched in future thinking demands and 2) future-oriented and present-oriented imagination conditions matched in scene-construction de

SUBMITTER: Palombo DJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5965081 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature