Remembering what could have happened: neural correlates of episodic counterfactual thinking

Episodic memory without autonoetic consciousness

Ever since Tulving's influential 1985 article 'Memory and consciousness', it has become traditional to think of autonoetic consciousness as necessary for episodic memory. This paper questions this claim. Specifically, it argues that the construct of autonoetic consciousness lacks validity and that, even if it was valid, it would still not be necessary for episodic memory. The paper ends with a proposal to go back to a functional/computational characterization of episodic memory in which its characteristic phenomenology is a contingent feature of the retrieval process and, as a result, open to empirical scrutiny. The proposal also dovetails with recent taxonomies of memory that are independent of conscious awareness and suggests strategies to evaluate within- and between-individual variability in the conscious experience of episodic memories in human and non-human agents. This article is part of the theme issue 'Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research'.

Counterfactual thinking induces different neural patterns of memory modification in anxious individuals

Episodic counterfactual thinking (eCFT) is the process of mentally simulating alternate versions of experiences, which confers new phenomenological properties to the original memory and may be a useful therapeutic target for trait anxiety. However, it remains unclear how the neural representations of a memory change during eCFT. We hypothesized that eCFT-induced memory modification is associated with changes to the neural pattern of a memory primarily within the default mode network, moderated by dispositional anxiety levels. We tested this proposal by examining the representational dynamics of eCFT for 39 participants varying in trait anxiety. During eCFT, lateral parietal regions showed progressively more distinct activity patterns, whereas medial frontal neural activity patterns became more similar to those of the original memory. Neural pattern similarity in many default mode network regions was moderated by trait anxiety, where highly anxious individuals exhibited more generalized representations for upward eCFT (better counterfactual outcomes), but more distinct representations for downward eCFT (worse counterfactual outcomes). Our findings illustrate the efficacy of examining eCFT-based memory modification via neural pattern similarity, as well as the intricate interplay between trait anxiety and eCFT generation.

The vmPFC-IPL functional connectivity as the neural basis of future self-continuity impacted procrastination: the mediating role of anticipated positive outcomes

Procrastination is universally acknowledged as a problematic behavior with wide-ranging consequences impacting various facets of individuals' lives, including academic achievement, social accomplishments, and mental health. Although previous research has indicated that future self-continuity is robustly negatively correlated with procrastination, it remains unknown about the neural mechanisms underlying the impact of future self-continuity on procrastination. To address this issue, we employed a free construction approach to collect individuals' episodic future thinking (EFT) thoughts regarding specific procrastination tasks. Next, we conducted voxel-based morphometry (VBM) and resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) analysis to explore the neural substrates underlying future self-continuity. Behavior results revealed that future self-continuity was significantly negatively correlated with procrastination, and positively correlated with anticipated positive outcome. The VBM analysis showed a positive association between future self-continuity and gray matter volumes in the right ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). Furthermore, the RSFC results indicated that the functional connectivity between the right vmPFC and the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL) was positively correlated with future self-continuity. More importantly, the mediation analysis demonstrated that anticipated positive outcome can completely mediate the relationship between the vmPFC-IPL functional connectivity and procrastination. These findings suggested that vmPFC-IPL functional connectivity might prompt anticipated positive outcome about the task and thereby reduce procrastination, which provides a new perspective to understand the relationship between future self-continuity and procrastination.

Peering into the future: Eye movements predict neural repetition effects during episodic simulation

Imagining future scenarios involves recombining different elements of past experiences into a coherent event, a process broadly supported by the brain's default network. Prior work suggests that distinct brain regions may contribute to the inclusion of different simulation features. Here we examine how activity in these brain regions relates to the vividness of future simulations. Thirty-four healthy young adults imagined future events with familiar people and locations in a two-part study involving a repetition suppression paradigm. First, participants imagined events while their eyes were tracked during a behavioral session. Immediately after, participants imagined events during MRI scanning. The events to be imagined were manipulated such that some were identical to those imagined in the behavioral session while others involved new locations, new people, or both. In this way, we could examine how self-report ratings and eye movements predict brain activity during simulation along with specific simulation features. Vividness ratings were negatively correlated with eye movements, in contrast to an often-observed positive relationship with past recollection. Moreover, fewer eye movements predicted greater involvement of the hippocampus during simulation, an effect specific to location features. Our findings suggest that eye movements may facilitate scene construction for future thinking, lending support to frameworks that spatial information forms the foundation of episodic simulation.

Age-consistent phenomenological experience in remembering the past and imagining the past and the future

We investigated age differences in mental time travel by comparing young, middle-aged and older adults, with equal number of participants in each age decade, from age 22 to 79. Participants generated and phenomenologically rated one experienced and one imagined past event, and two imagined future events. The results showed event type effects with richer phenomenology for experienced than imagined events, but no age group differences. Specifically, experienced events were more vivid, detailed, and were re-lived in the mind more than the other event types. All events were highly central to life, revealing no event type effects on centrality. For both past events, older age groups generated more distant events. There were no age group differences for temporal distance for the two future events. Both future events were from a near future. The results suggest that for events that are central to life, phenomenological experience may be similar across the adulthood.

How people think about the truth of hypothetical impossibilities

People can think about hypothetical impossibilities and a curious observation is that some impossible conditionals seem true and others do not. Four experiments test the proposal that people think about impossibilities just as they do possibilities, by attempting to construct a consistent simulation of the impossible conjecture with its suggested outcome, informed by their knowledge of the real world. The results show that participants judge some impossible conditionals true with one outcome, for example, "if people were made of steel, they would not bruise easily" and false with the opposite outcome, "if people were made of steel they would bruise easily", and others false with either outcome, for example, "if houses were made of spaghetti, their engines would (not) be noisy". However, they can sometimes judge impossible conditionals true with either outcome, for example, "if Plato were identical to Socrates, he would (not) have a small nose", or "if sheep and wolves were alike, they would (not) eat grass". The results were observed for judgments about what could be true (Experiments 1 and 4), judgments of degrees of truth (Experiment 2), and judgments of what is true (Experiment 3). The results rule out the idea that people evaluate the truth of a hypothetical impossibility by relying on cognitive processes that compare the probability of each conditional to its counterpart with the opposite outcome.

Perceived plausibility modulates hippocampal activity in episodic counterfactual thinking

Episodic counterfactual thinking (ECT) consists of imagining alternative outcomes to past personal events. Previous research has shown that ECT shares common neural substrates with episodic future thinking (EFT): our ability to imagine possible future events. Both ECT and EFT have been shown to critically depend on the hippocampus, and past research has explored hippocampal engagement as a function of the perceived plausibility of an imagined future event. However, the extent to which the hippocampus is modulated by perceived plausibility during ECT is unknown. In this study, we combine two functional magnetic resonance imaging datasets to investigate whether perceived plausibility modulates hippocampal activity during ECT. Our results indicate that plausibility parametrically modulates hippocampal activity during ECT, and that such modulation is confined to the left anterior portion of the hippocampus. Moreover, our results indicate that this modulation is positive, such that increased activity in the left anterior hippocampus is associated with higher ratings of ECT plausibility. We suggest that neither effort nor difficulty alone can account for these results, and instead suggest possible alternatives to explain the role of the hippocampus during the construction of plausible and implausible ECT.

An exploratory study on counterfactual thinking in amyotrophic lateral sclerosis

Objectives

This study aimed at exploring (1) the motor and non-motor correlates of counterfactual thinking (CFT) abilities in non-demented amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) patients and (2) the ability of CFT measures to discriminate these patients from healthy controls (HCs) and patients with and without cognitive impairment.

Methods

N = 110 ALS patients and N = 51 HCs were administered two CFT tasks, whose sum, resulting in a CFT Index (CFTI), was addressed as the outcome. Patients further underwent an in-depth cognitive, behavioral, and motor-functional evaluation. Correlational analyses were run to explore the correlates of the CFTI in patients. Logistic regressions were performed to test whether the CFTI could discriminate patients from HCs.

Results

The CFTI was selectively associated (p ≤ 0.005) with fluency and memory subscales of the Edinburgh Cognitive and Behavioral ALS Screen (ECAS), but not with other variables. CFTI scores discriminated patients from HCs (p < 0.001) with high accuracy (82%), but not patients with a normal vs. defective performance on the ECAS-Total.

Conclusion

CFT measures in non-demented ALS patients were associated with verbal fluency and memory functions, and they were also able to discriminate them from HCs.

Individual differences in the frequency of voluntary & involuntary episodic memories, future thoughts, and counterfactual thoughts

Voluntary and involuntary mental time travel can take the form of episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and episodic counterfactual thinking. This study uses an individual-differences approach to understand why people engage in these forms of mental time travel. The individual-differences variables include trait-level personality, boredom proneness, depression, anxiety, stress, emotion regulation, mindfulness, mind-wandering, positive and negative affect, rumination, optimism, thinking styles, and time perspective. Across two studies, our results indicate that individual differences underlie these forms of mental time travel. The most unique, episodic counterfactual thinking, was alone positively correlated with negative emotionality and negatively correlated with optimism. We also observe differences as a function of voluntariness and discuss these findings in relation to the cognitively demanding nature of constructing future and counterfactual thoughts. We discuss the importance of distinguishing voluntary from involuntary thinking and assessing episodic counterfactual thinking in relation to episodic memory and episodic future thinking.

How people reason with counterfactual and causal explanations for Artificial Intelligence decisions in familiar and unfamiliar domains

Few empirical studies have examined how people understand counterfactual explanations for other people's decisions, for example, "if you had asked for a lower amount, your loan application would have been approved". Yet many current Artificial Intelligence (AI) decision support systems rely on counterfactual explanations to improve human understanding and trust. We compared counterfactual explanations to causal ones, i.e., "because you asked for a high amount, your loan application was not approved", for an AI's decisions in a familiar domain (alcohol and driving) and an unfamiliar one (chemical safety) in four experiments (n = 731). Participants were shown inputs to an AI system, its decisions, and an explanation for each decision; they attempted to predict the AI's decisions, or to make their own decisions. Participants judged counterfactual explanations more helpful than causal ones, but counterfactuals did not improve the accuracy of their predictions of the AI's decisions more than causals (Experiment 1). However, counterfactuals improved the accuracy of participants' own decisions more than causals (Experiment 2). When the AI's decisions were correct (Experiments 1 and 2), participants considered explanations more helpful and made more accurate judgements in the familiar domain than in the unfamiliar one; but when the AI's decisions were incorrect, they considered explanations less helpful and made fewer accurate judgements in the familiar domain than the unfamiliar one, whether they predicted the AI's decisions (Experiment 3a) or made their own decisions (Experiment 3b). The results corroborate the proposal that counterfactuals provide richer information than causals, because their mental representation includes more possibilities.

A language of episodic thought?

We propose that episodic thought (i.e., episodic memory and imagination) is a domain where the language-of-thought hypothesis (LoTH) could be fruitfully applied. On the one hand, LoTH could explain the structure of what is encoded into and retrieved from long-term memory. On the other, LoTH can help make sense of how episodic contents come to play such a large variety of different cognitive roles after they have been retrieved.

Evidence for Spinozan "Unbelieving" in the Right Inferior Prefrontal Cortex

Humans can think about possible states of the world without believing in them, an important capacity for high-level cognition. Here, we use fMRI and a novel "shell game" task to test two competing theories about the nature of belief and its neural basis. According to the Cartesian theory, information is first understood, then assessed for veracity, and ultimately encoded as either believed or not believed. According to the Spinozan theory, comprehension entails belief by default, such that understanding without believing requires an additional process of "unbelieving." Participants (n = 70) were experimentally induced to have beliefs, desires, or mere thoughts about hidden states of the shell game (e.g., believing that the dog is hidden in the upper right corner). That is, participants were induced to have specific "propositional attitudes" toward specific "propositions" in a controlled way. Consistent with the Spinozan theory, we found that thinking about a proposition without believing it is associated with increased activation of the right inferior frontal gyrus. This was true whether the hidden state was desired by the participant (because of reward) or merely thought about. These findings are consistent with a version of the Spinozan theory whereby unbelieving is an inhibitory control process. We consider potential implications of these results for the phenomena of delusional belief and wishful thinking.

Should I have been more careful or less careless? The comparative nature of counterfactual thoughts alters judgments of their impact

Counterfactual thoughts inherently imply a comparison of a given reality to an alternative state of affairs. Previous research mainly considered consequences of different counterfactual types, namely focus (other vs. self), structure (additive vs. subtractive), and direction (upward vs. downward). The current work investigates whether a 'more-than' versus 'less-than' comparative nature of counterfactual thoughts alters judgments of their impact. Four experiments demonstrated that self-generated other- (Studies 1 and 3) and self-focused (Study 2) upward counterfactuals are judged more impactful when they entail 'more-than' rather than 'less-than' comparisons. Judgments include plausibility and persuasiveness, as well as counterfactuals' likelihood to change future behavior and feelings. Self-reported ease of thought generation and (dis)fluency gauged by difficulty in thought generation was similarly affected. This more-less asymmetry reversed in Study 3 for downward counterfactual thoughts, with 'less-than' counterfactuals being judged more impactful and easier to generate. Further attesting to the role of ease, when spontaneously generating comparative counterfactuals, participants correctly provided more 'more-than' upward counterfactuals, but more 'less-than' downward counterfactuals (Study 4). These findings delineate one of the to date few conditions for a reversal of the more-less asymmetry and provide support for a correspondence principle, the simulation heuristic, and thus the role of ease in counterfactual thinking. They suggest that especially 'more-than' counterfactuals following negative events, and 'less-than' counterfactuals following positive events, are likely to have an important impact on people. (226 words).

The Spontaneous Counterfactual Inference Task: Misremembering What Might Have Been

Counterfactuals, thoughts about "what might have been," play an important role in causal judgment, emotion, and motivation, and spontaneously arise during daily life. However, current methods to measure spontaneous counterfactual thinking are cumbersome and subjective. The current research adapts a paradigm from the Spontaneous Trait Inference literature to develop the Spontaneous Counterfactual Inference measure (SCFI), which uses false recognition of counterfactual statements as a measure of spontaneous counterfactual thought. Studies 1a and 1b demonstrate that the SCFI is sensitive to precursors of counterfactual thinking: norm violation and counterfactual closeness. Study 2 demonstrates that the SCFI converges with the generation of counterfactual statements in an open-ended writing task. The SCFI also predicts two important consequences of counterfactual thought, blame (Study 3), and intention endorsement (Study 4). The SCFI thus offers a new tool for researchers interested in counterfactual thinking.

Neural differences between internal and external episodic counterfactual thoughts

Episodic counterfactual thoughts (eCFT) consist of imagining alternative outcomes to past experiences. A common sub-class of eCFT-upward eCFT-involves imagining how past negative experiences could have been better, either because one could have done something differently (internal) or because something about the circumstances could have been different (external). Although previous neuroimaging research has shown that the brain's default mode network (DMN) supports upward eCFT, it is unclear how it is differentially recruited during internal versus external upward eCFT. We collected functional magnetic resonance imaging data while participants remembered negative autobiographical memories, generated either internal or external upward eCFT for the memory, and then rated the plausibility, perceived control and difficulty of eCFT generation. Both internal and external eCFT engaged midline regions of cingulate cortex, a central node of the DMN. Most activity differentiating eCFT, however, occurred outside the DMN. External eCFT engaged cuneus, angular gyrus and precuneus, whereas internal eCFT engaged posterior cingulate and precentral gyrus. Angular gyrus and precuneus were additionally sensitive to perceived plausibility of external eCFT, while postcentral gyrus and insula activity scaled with perceived plausibility of internal eCFT. These results highlight the key brain regions that might be involved in cases of maladaptive mental simulations. This article is part of the theme issue 'Thinking about possibilities: mechanisms, ontogeny, functions and phylogeny'.

Episodic representation: A mental models account

This paper offers a modeling account of episodic representation. I argue that the episodic system constructs mental models: representations that preserve the spatiotemporal structure of represented domains. In prototypical cases, these domains are events: occurrences taken by subjects to have characteristic structures, dynamics and relatively determinate beginnings and ends. Due to their simplicity and manipulability, mental event models can be used in a variety of cognitive contexts: in remembering the personal past, but also in future-oriented and counterfactual imagination. As structural representations, they allow surrogative reasoning, supporting inferences about their constituents which can be used in reasoning about the represented events.

Cognitive processes in imaginative moral shifts: How judgments of morally unacceptable actions change

How do people come to consider a morally unacceptable action, such as “a passenger in an airplane does not want to sit next to a Muslim passenger and so he tells the stewardess the passenger must be moved to another seat”, to be less unacceptable? We propose they tend to imagine counterfactual alternatives about how things could have been different that transform the unacceptable action to be less unacceptable. Five experiments identify the cognitive processes underlying this imaginative moral shift: an action is judged less unacceptable when people imagine circumstances in which it would have been moral. The effect occurs for immediate counterfactuals and reflective ones, but is greater when participants create an immediate counterfactual first, and diminished when they create a reflective one first. The effect also occurs for unreasonable actions. We discuss the implications for alternative theories of the mental representations and cognitive processes underlying moral judgments.

Processing Attenuating NPIs in Indicative and Counterfactual Conditionals

Both indicative and counterfactual conditionals are known to be licensing contexts for negative polarity items (NPIs). However, a recent theoretical account suggests that the licensing of attenuating NPIs like English all that in the conditional antecedent is sensitive to pragmatic differences between various types of conditionals. We conducted three behavioral experiments in order to test key predictions made by that proposal. In Experiment 1, we tested hypothetical indicative and counterfactual conditionals with the English NPI all that, finding that the NPI is degraded in the former compared to the latter. In Experiment 2, we compared hypothetical indicative conditionals and premise conditionals with the same NPI, again finding a degradation only for the former. Both results align with theoretically derived predictions purporting that hypothetical indicative conditionals are degraded due to their susceptibility to conditional perfection. Finally, Experiment 3 provides empirical evidence that comprehenders readily strengthen counterfactual conditionals to biconditionals, in line with theoretical analyses that assume that conditional perfection and counterfactual inferences are compatible. Their ability to still host attenuating NPIs in the conditional antecedent, by contrast, falls into place via the antiveridical inference to the falsity of the antecedent. Altogether, our study sheds light on the interplay between NPI licensing and the semantic and pragmatic properties of various types of conditionals. Moreover, it provides a novel perspective on the processing of different kinds of conditionals in context, in particular, with regard to their (non)veridicality properties.

Episodic Past, Future, and counterfactual thinking in Relapsing-Remitting Multiple sclerosis

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Performance in episodic past, future or counterfactual thinking in relapsing-remitting MS and controls was explored.

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Behavioral and diffusion weighted imaging were used to evaluate associations between white matter integrity and group differences in performance.

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Relative to controls, MS patients showed reductions in episodic details across all three simulations.

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Reduced white matter integrity in three association tracts predicted this reduction in episodic details during counterfactual simulations.

Multiple sclerosis (MS) is a progressive disease characterized by widespread white matter lesions in the brain and spinal cord. In addition to well-characterized motor deficits, MS results in cognitive impairments in several domains, notably in episodic autobiographical memory. Recent studies have also revealed that patients with MS exhibit deficits in episodic future thinking, i.e., our capacity to imagine possible events that may occur in our personal future. Both episodic memory and episodic future thinking have been shown to share cognitive and neural mechanisms with a related kind of hypothetical simulation known as episodic counterfactual thinking: our capacity to imagine alternative ways in which past personal events could have occurred but did not. However, the extent to which episodic counterfactual thinking is affected in MS is still unknown. The current study sought to explore this issue by comparing performance in mental simulation tasks involving either past, future or counterfactual thoughts in relapsing-remitting MS. Diffusion weighted imaging (DWI) measures were also extracted to determine whether changes in structural pathways connecting the brain’s default mode network (DMN) would be associated with group differences in task performance. Relative to controls, patients showed marked reductions in the number of internal details across all mental simulations, but no differences in the number of external and semantic-based details. It was also found that, relative to controls, patients with relapsing-remitting MS reported reduced composition ratings for episodic simulations depicting counterfactual events, but not so for actual past or possible future episodes. Additionally, three DWI measures of white matter integrity—fractional anisotropy, radial diffusivity and streamline counts—showed reliable differences between patients with relapsing-remitting MS and matched healthy controls. Importantly, DWI measures associated with reduced white matter integrity in three association tracts on the DMN—the right superior longitudinal fasciculus, the left hippocampal portion of the cingulum and the left inferior longitudinal fasciculus—predicted reductions in the number of internal details during episodic counterfactual simulations. Taken together, these results help to illuminate impairments in episodic simulation in relapsing-remitting MS and show, for the first time, a differential association between white matter integrity and deficits in episodic counterfactual thinking in individuals with relapsing-remitting MS.

A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away: How temporal are episodic contents?

A prominent feature of mental event (i.e. 'episodic') simulations is their temporal orientation: human adults can generate episodic representations directed towards the past or the future. Here, we investigated how the temporal orientation of imagined events relates to the contents of these events. Is there something intrinsically temporal about episodic contents? Or does their temporality rely on a distinct set of representations? In three experiments (N = 360), we asked participants to generate and later recall a series of imagined events differing in (1) location, (2) time of day, (3) temporal orientation, and (4) weekday. We then tested to what extent successful recall of episodic content (i.e. (1) and (2)) would predict recall of temporality and/or weekday information. Results showed that recall of temporal orientation was only weakly predicted by recall of episodic contents. Nonetheless, temporal orientation was more strongly predicted by content recall than weekday recall. This finding suggests that episodic simulations are unlikely to be intrinsically temporal in nature. Instead, similar to other forms of temporal information, temporal orientation might be determined from such contents by reconstructive post-retrieval processes. These results have implications for how the human ability to 'mentally travel' in time is cognitively implemented.

Similarities and differences in understanding negative and affirmative counterfactuals and causal assertions: Evidence from eye-tracking

Two eye-tracking experiments compared affirmative and negative counterfactuals, "if she had (not) arrived early, she would (not) have bought roses" and affirmative and negative causal assertions, "Because she arrived (did not arrive) early, she bought (did not buy) roses." When participants heard a counterfactual, they looked on screen at words corresponding to its conjecture ("roses"), and its presupposed facts ("no roses"), whereas for a causal assertion, they looked only at words corresponding to the facts. For counterfactuals, they looked at the conjecture first, and later the presupposed facts, and at the latter more than the former. The effect was more pronounced for negative counterfactuals than affirmative ones because the negative counterfactual's presupposed facts identify a specific item ("she bought roses"), whereas the affirmative counterfactual's presupposed facts do not ("she did not buy roses"). Hence, when participants were given a binary context, "she did not know whether to buy roses or carnations," they looked primarily at the presupposed facts for both sorts of counterfactuals. We discuss the implications for theories of negation, the dual meaning of counterfactuals, and their relation to causal assertions.

Divergent thinking and constructing future events: dissociating old from new ideas

Divergent thinking (the ability to generate creative ideas by combining diverse types of information) has been previously linked to the ability to imagine novel and specific future autobiographical events. Here, we examined whether divergent thinking is differentially associated with the ability to construct novel imagined future events and recast future events (i.e., actual past events recast as future events) as opposed to recalled past events. We also examined whether different types of creative ideas (i.e., old ideas from memory or new ideas from imagination) underlie the linkage between divergent thinking and various autobiographical events. Divergent thinking ability was measured using the Alternate Uses Task (AUT). In Experiment 1, the amount of episodic details for both novel and recast future events was associated with divergent thinking (AUT scores), and this relationship was significant with AUT scores for new creative ideas but not old creative ideas. There was no significant relationship between divergent thinking and the amount of episodic detail for recalled past events. We extended these findings in Experiment 2 to a different test of divergent thinking, the Consequences Task. These results demonstrate that individual differences in divergent thinking are associated with the capacity to both imagine and recast future events.

Neural Correlates of Modal Displacement and Discourse-Updating under (Un)Certainty

A hallmark of human thought is the ability to think about not just the actual world but also about alternative ways the world could be. One way to study this contrast is through language. Language has grammatical devices for expressing possibilities and necessities, such as the words might or must With these devices, called "modal expressions," we can study the actual versus possible contrast in a highly controlled way. While factual utterances such as "There is a monster under my bed" update the here-and-now of a discourse model, a modal version of this sentence, "There might be a monster under my bed," displaces from the here-and-now and merely postulates a possibility. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to test whether the processes of discourse updating and modal displacement dissociate in the brain. Factual and modal utterances were embedded in short narratives, and across two experiments, factual expressions increased the measured activity over modal expressions. However, the localization of the increase appeared to depend on perspective: signal localizing in right temporoparietal areas increased when updating the representation of someone else's beliefs, while frontal medial areas seem sensitive to updating one's own beliefs. The presence of modal displacement did not elevate MEG signal strength in any of our analyses. In sum, this study identifies potential neural signatures of the process by which facts get added to our mental representation of the world.

Dispositional optimism weakly predicts upward, rather than downward, counterfactual thinking: A prospective correlational study using episodic recall

Counterfactual thoughts center on how the past could have been different. Such thoughts may be differentiated in terms of direction of comparison, such that upward counterfactuals focus on how the past could have been better, whereas downward counterfactuals focus on how the past could have been worse. A key question is how such past-oriented thoughts connect to future-oriented individual differences such as optimism. Ambiguities surround a series of past studies in which optimism predicted relatively greater downward counterfactual thinking. Our main study (N = 1150) and six supplementary studies (N = 1901) re-examined this link to reveal a different result, a weak relation between optimism and upward (rather than downward) counterfactual thinking. These results offer an important correction to the counterfactual literature and are informative for theory on individual differences in optimism.

Blessedly forgetful and blissfully unaware: a positivity bias in memory for (re)constructions of imagined past and future events

People frequently consider the alternatives of the events that can happen in the future and of the events that already happened in the past in everyday life. The current study investigates the effects of engaging in imagination of hypothetical future (Experiment 1) and past (Experiment 2) events on memory and metamemory. We demonstrate, across two experiments, that imagination of positive future and positive past events yielded greater memory performance than negative events, as well as receiving higher vividness and plausibility ratings. In addition, simulation of a negative event occurring positively in the future or having occurred positively in the past produced higher memory performance, compared to simulation of a positive event occurring / having occurred negatively. However, participants' predictions for their subsequent memory performance did not reflect their increased tendency to remember positive or could-be / could-have-been positive events neither for future nor past reconstructions. These findings are interpreted in the framework of positivity bias which suggests that people have a tendency towards positivity when simulating future events; and we extend this positivity bias to reconstructions of the hypothetical past events as well.

How visual perspective influences the spatiotemporal dynamics of autobiographical memory retrieval

Visual perspective, recalling events from one's own eyes or one of several possible observer viewpoints, is a fundamental aspect of AM. Yet, exactly how visual perspective influences the functional mechanisms supporting retrieval is unclear. Here we used a multivariate analysis to characterize the spatiotemporal dynamics of networks supporting AM retrieval from multiple typical and atypical visual perspectives. Both own eyes and observer perspectives engaged an AM retrieval network (i.e., hippocampus, anterior and posterior midline, and lateral frontal and posterior cortices) that peaked during later retrieval periods, but was recruited less strongly for observer perspectives. Functional connectivity analyses with an anterior hippocampal seed revealed that visual perspective also affected the strength and timing of neural recruitment. There was stronger hippocampal connectivity with a posterior medial network during the initial retrieval of AMs from atypical observer perspectives and stronger within-MTL and ventromedial prefrontal cortex connectivity during later retrieval periods from own eyes perspectives, suggesting that visual perspective is an important factor in understanding how neocortical systems guide memory retrieval. Our findings demonstrate that adopting own eyes and observer perspectives during AM retrieval is correlated with distinct patterns of hippocampal-neocortical interactions associated with differential recruitment of the AM retrieval network during later retrieval periods, thereby supporting the central role of visual perspective in reconstructing the personal past.

Differential contribution of anterior and posterior midline regions during mental simulation of counterfactual and perspective shifts in autobiographical memories

Retrieving autobiographical memories induces a natural tendency to mentally simulate alternate versions of past events, either by reconstructing the perceptual details of the originally experienced perspective or the conceptual information of what actually occurred. Here we examined whether the episodic system recruited during imaginative experiences functionally dissociates depending on the nature of this reconstruction. Using fMRI, we evaluated differential patterns of neural activity and hippocampal connectivity when twenty-nine participants naturally recalled past negative events, shifted visual perspective, or imagined better or worse outcomes than what actually occurred. We found that counterfactual thoughts were distinguished by neural recruitment in dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, whereas shifts in visual perspective were uniquely supported by the precuneus. Additionally, connectivity with the anterior hippocampus changed depending upon the mental simulation that was performed - with enhanced hippocampal connectivity with medial prefrontal cortex for counterfactual simulations and precuneus for shifted visual perspectives. Together, our findings provide a novel assessment of differences between these common methods of mental simulation and a more detailed account for the neural network underlying episodic retrieval and reconstruction.

Scrutinizing the grey areas of declarative memory: Do the self-reference and temporal orientation of a trait knowledge task modulate the Late Positive Component (LPC)?

Knowledge about the future self may engage cognitive processes typically ascribed to episodic memory, such as awareness of the future self as an extension of the current self (i.e., autonoetic awareness) and the construction of future events. In a prior study (Tanguay et al., 2018), temporal orientation influenced the Late Positive Component (LPC), an ERP correlate of recollection. The LPC amplitude for present traits was intermediate between semantic and episodic memory, whereas thinking about one's future traits produced a larger LPC amplitude that was similar to episodic memory. Here, we examined further the effect of temporal orientation on the LPC amplitude and investigated if it was influenced by whether knowledge concerns the self or another person, with the proximity of the other being considered. Participants verified whether traits (e.g., Enthusiastic) were true of themselves and the "other," both now and in the future. Proximity of the other person was manipulated between subjects, such that participants either thought about the typical traits of a close friend (n = 31), or those of their age group more broadly (n = 35). Self-reference and temporal orientation interacted: The LPC amplitude for future knowledge was larger than for present knowledge, but only for the self. This effect of temporal orientation was not observed when participants thought about the traits of other people. The proximity of the other person did not modify these effects. Future-oriented cognition can engage different cognitive processes depending on self-reference; knowledge about the personal future increased the LPC amplitude unlike thinking about the future of other people. Our findings strengthen the notion of self-knowledge as a grey area between semantic and episodic memory.

A role for the medial temporal lobe subsystem in guiding prosociality: the effect of episodic processes on willingness to help others

Why are we willing to help others? Recent behavioral work on episodic processes (i.e. the ability to represent an event that is specific in time and place) suggests that imagining and remembering scenes of helping a person in need increases intentions to help. Here, we provide insight into the cognitive and neural mechanisms that enhance prosocial intentions via episodic simulation and memory. In Experiment 1, we scanned participants using functional neuroimaging as they imagined and remembered helping episodes, and completed non-episodic control conditions accounting for exposure to the story of need and conceptual priming of helping. Analyses revealed that activity in the medial temporal lobe (MTL) subsystem, as well as the right temporoparietal junction (RTPJ) predicted the effect of conditions on the strength of prosocial intentions. In Experiment 2, we used transcranial magnetic stimulation to disrupt activity in the RTPJ, and better isolate the contribution of MTL subsystem to prosocial intentions. The effect of conditions on willingness to help remained even when activity in the RTPJ was disrupted, suggesting that activity in the MTL subsystem may primarily support this prosocial effect. It seems our willingness to help may be guided, in part, by how easily we can construct imagined and remembered helping episodes.

Concepts and Compositionality: In Search of the Brain's Language of Thought

Imagine Genghis Khan, Aretha Franklin, and the Cleveland Cavaliers performing an opera on Maui. This silly sentence makes a serious point: As humans, we can flexibly generate and comprehend an unbounded number of complex ideas. Little is known, however, about how our brains accomplish this. Here we assemble clues from disparate areas of cognitive neuroscience, integrating recent research on language, memory, episodic simulation, and computational models of high-level cognition. Our review is framed by Fodor's classic language of thought hypothesis, according to which our minds employ an amodal, language-like system for combining and recombining simple concepts to form more complex thoughts. Here, we highlight emerging work on combinatorial processes in the brain and consider this work's relation to the language of thought. We review evidence for distinct, but complementary, contributions of map-like representations in subregions of the default mode network and sentence-like representations of conceptual relations in regions of the temporal and prefrontal cortex.

How imagining personal future scenarios influences affect: Systematic review and meta-analysis

Imagining the future is a fundamental human capacity that occupies a large part of people's waking time and impacts their affective well-being. In this meta-analysis, we examined the effect of (1) positive future imagination and (2) negative future imagination on affect, and (3) compared the affective responses between imagining the future and remembering the past; lastly, we (4) examined potential moderating variables in this regard. We identified 63 experimental studies (N = 6813) from different research areas and combined studies that applied the best possible self imagination task, future worry induction, and episodic future simulation, respectively. Findings yielded that imagining the future has a moderate to strong impact on affect, and it has a stronger influence on affect compared to remembering the past. Relevant moderator variables in each research area were also identified. We discuss the findings for the field of psychology in general and clinical psychology in particular. More elaborate research on personal future imagination seems crucial for the further advancement of clinical applications for mental health complaints. We conclude with recommendations for future research on the impact of future imagination on affective well-being.

Imagining Events Alternative to the Present Can Attenuate Delay Discounting

Previous studies have shown that delay discounting (DD), the tendency to prefer smaller-immediate to larger-delayed rewards, decreases following vivid imagination of future events. Here, we test the hypothesis that imagining complex events alternative to direct (perceptual) experience, whether located in the future, the past, or even the present, would reduce DD. Participants (N = 250) imagined future events (Future condition), remembered past events (Past condition), imagined present events (Present-imagine condition), or reported on the current events (Present-attend condition), and then made a series of intertemporal choices about money and food. Compared to attending to the present, imagining the future reduced DD, but this only held for individuals who claimed vivid pre-experiencing of future events. Importantly, a similar attenuation of DD was found in the Past and Present-imagine conditions, suggesting that a shift in perspective from the perceptual present towards mentally constructed experience can downplay the appraisal of immediate rewards in favor of larger-delayed rewards, regardless of the location of the imagined experience in subjective time.

Beyond episodic remembering: elaborative retrieval of lifetime periods in young and older adults

Relative to young adults, cognitively normal older adults commonly generate more semantic details and fewer episodic details in their descriptions of unique life events. It remains unclear whether this reflects a specific change to episodic memory or a broader alteration to autobiographical narration. To explore age differences across different types of autobiographical narration, we created a lifetime period narrative task that involves describing extended events. For comparison, participants also described unique life events. All autobiographical narratives were scored for episodic, semantic, and other detail generation. Relative to young adults, older adults generated more detailed narratives for remote and recent lifetime periods, which was driven by their increased retrieval of personal and general semantic details. Older adults also generated more semantic details for unique life event narratives, along with reduced episodic detail. More broadly, in both groups lifetime period narratives were largely based on semantic details, whereas episodic details were more prominent in the descriptions of unique life events. These findings indicate that the elevated generation of semantic details associated with normal cognitive aging is reflected in multiple types of autobiographical narration. We suggest that lifetime period narration is a spared aspect of autobiographical memory among older adults.

How We Know What Not To Think

Humans often represent and reason about unrealized possible actions - the vast infinity of things that were not (or have not yet been) chosen. This capacity is central to the most impressive of human abilities: causal reasoning, planning, linguistic communication, moral judgment, etc. Nevertheless, how do we select possible actions that are worth considering from the infinity of unrealized actions that are better left ignored? We review research across the cognitive sciences, and find that the possible actions considered by default are those that are both likely to occur and generally valuable. We then offer a unified theory of why. We propose that (i) across diverse cognitive tasks, the possible actions we consider are biased towards those of general practical utility, and (ii) a plausible primary function for this mechanism resides in decision making.

Spontaneous spatial navigation circuitry in schizophrenia spectrum disorders

Spatial memory is core to wayfinding and everyday memory. Interestingly, individuals with schizophrenia using spatial navigation strategies (cognitive mapping) are impaired, whereas those using response-based (e.g., single-landmark) strategies show relatively intact memory performance. We observed abnormal brain communication in schizophrenia participants who used a spatial strategy during a virtual-reality navigation task, particularly between temporal and frontal brain regions. In contrast, schizophrenia participants using a response strategy recruited similar brain systems to healthy participants, but to a greater extent to support memory performance. These findings highlight that strategy use is an important consideration for understanding memory systems and navigation in schizophrenia.

Episodic Counterfactual Thinking

Our tendency to engage in episodic counterfactual thinking—namely, imagining alternative ways in which past personal events could have occurred but did not—is ubiquitous. Although widely studied by cognitive and social psychologists, this autobiographically based variety of counterfactual thought has been connected only recently to research on the cognitive and neuroscientific basis of episodic memory and mental simulation. In the current article, we offer an empirical characterization of episodic counterfactual thinking by contrasting it with related varieties of mental simulation along three dimensions: temporal context, degree of episodic detail, and modal profile (i.e., perceived possibility or impossibility). In so doing, we offer a practical strategy to navigate the nascent literature on episodic counterfactual thinking within the context of other mental simulations, and we argue that the evidence surveyed strongly indicates that although connected along the aforementioned dimensions, episodic counterfactual thinking is a psychological process different from episodic memory, episodic future thinking, and semantic counterfactual thinking.

Content-specific phenomenological similarity between episodic memory and simulation

Numerous studies have indicated that remembering specific past experiences (i.e., episodic memory) and imagining specific novel future experiences (i.e., episodic simulation) are supported by common mental processes. An open question, however, is whether and to what extent the content of specific past episodes is sampled when simulating a specific future episode. The current study aimed to answer this question. Participants recalled past episodes each comprising two episodic details, a personally familiar location and person. Participants also simulated novel future episodes using recombined pairs of person and location details taken from different recalled episodes. Participants rated the vividness of each location and person in their memory and simulation. We conducted a multi-level analysis where the vividness rating during memory was used to predict the vividness rating during simulation at the level of individual shared details (i.e., location or person). The vividness of the memorial detail co-varied with the vividness of the simulated detail; this relationship persisted even after accounting for the underlying familiarity of the details. These findings strongly suggest that simulations of specific future experiences are based upon the contents of specific prior episodes.

Cognições sobre Eventos Passados: uma Revisão da Literatura

El presente estudio tuvo como fin reunir y sintetizar resultados de múltiples artículos del área del pensamiento contrafactual, entre los años 2005 y 2015. Se obtuvieron 99 artículos en las bases de datos PsycInfo, Web of Science y SciELO, con la palabra clave “pensamiento contrafactual” y su correspondiente en lengua inglesa counterfactual thinking. La multiplicidad de publicaciones y áreas relacionadas se discuten haciendo énfasis en el rol del pensamiento contrafactual en distintas vertientes de procesos neurológicos, psicológicos y sociales.

How thinking about what could have been affects how we feel about what was

Episodic counterfactual thoughts (CFT) and autobiographical memories (AM) involve the reactivation and recombination of episodic memory components into mental simulations. Upon reactivation, memories become labile and prone to modification. Thus, reactivating AM in the context of mentally generating CFT may provide an opportunity for editing processes to modify the content of the original memory. To examine this idea, this paper reports the results of two studies that investigated the effect of reactivating negative and positive AM in the context of either imagining a better (i.e. upward CFT) or a worse (i.e. downward CFT) alternative to an experienced event, as opposed to attentively retrieving the memory without mental modification (i.e. remembering) or no reactivation. Our results suggest that attentive remembering was the best strategy to both reduce the negative affect associated with negative AM, and to prevent the decay of positive affect associated with positive AM. In addition, reactivating positive, but not negative, AM with or without CFT modification reduces the perceived arousal of the original memory over time. Finally, reactivating negative AM in a downward CFT or an attentive remembering condition increases the perceived detail of the original memory over time.

Imagining What Could Have Happened: Types and Vividness of Counterfactual Thoughts and the Relationship With Post-traumatic Stress Reactions

A growing body of research suggests that counterfactual thinking after traumatic events is associated with post-traumatic stress reactions. In this study we explored frequency of upward and downward counterfactuals in trauma-exposed individuals, and how trauma-related counterfactuals were represented in terms of vividness. We examined the relationships between vividness and frequency of counterfactual thoughts and post-traumatic stress reactions in two groups who had experienced different types of traumatic exposure, namely survivors and bereaved from the fire on the ferry Scandinavian Star in 1990. Even after 26 years, both survivors and bereaved reported that they currently entertained thoughts about what could have happened during the fire on Scandinavian Star. Survivors reported more downward counterfactuals than the bereaved, whereas the bereaved reported more upward counterfactuals than the survivors did. Vividness of counterfactual thoughts, as well as reported frequency of upward and downward counterfactuals, were associated with post-traumatic stress reactions. Our results suggest that both upward and downward counterfactuals can be harmful, and that vivid counterfactuals about a traumatic event might play a similar role in post-traumatic stress as trauma memories. Therefore, traumatized individuals who entertain counterfactual thoughts may benefit from interventions that target these thoughts specifically.

Neural effects of environmental advertising: An fMRI analysis of voice age and temporal framing

Ecological information offered to society through advertising enhances awareness of environmental issues, encourages development of sustainable attitudes and intentions, and can even alter behavior. This paper, by means of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) and self-reports, explores the underlying mechanisms of processing ecological messages. The study specifically examines brain and behavioral responses to persuasive ecological messages that differ in temporal framing and in the age of the voice pronouncing them. The findings reveal that attitudes are more positive toward future-framed messages presented by young voices. The whole-brain analysis reveals that future-framed (FF) ecological messages trigger activation in brain areas related to imagery, prospective memories and episodic events, thus reflecting the involvement of past behaviors in future ecological actions. Past-framed messages (PF), in turn, elicit brain activations within the episodic system. Young voices (YV), in addition to triggering stronger activation in areas involved with the processing of high-timbre, high-pitched and high-intensity voices, are perceived as more emotional and motivational than old voices (OV) as activations in anterior cingulate cortex and amygdala. Messages expressed by older voices, in turn, exhibit stronger activation in areas formerly linked to low-pitched voices and voice gender perception. Interestingly, a link is identified between neural and self-report responses indicating that certain brain activations in response to future-framed messages and young voices predicted higher attitudes toward future-framed and young voice advertisements, respectively. The results of this study provide invaluable insight into the unconscious origin of attitudes toward environmental messages and indicate which voice and temporal frame of a message generate the greatest subconscious value.