Evidence for an implicit influence of memory on future thinking

People from the U.S. and China think about their personal and collective future differently

We investigated how people think about their personal life and their country by testing how participants in the U.S. and China think about personal and collective events in the past and future. Using a fluency task, we replicated prior research in showing that participants in the U.S. had a positivity bias toward their personal future and a negativity bias toward their country's future. In contrast, participants in China did not display a positivity or negativity bias toward either their personal or collective future. This result suggests that the valence dissociation between personal and collective future thinking is not universal. Additionally, when people considered the past in addition to the future, they displayed similar valence patterns for both temporal periods, providing evidence that people think about the past and the future similarly. We suggest political and cultural differences (such as dialectical thought) as potential explanations for the differences between countries in future thinking and memory.

Quantifying the heritability of belief formation

Individual differences in behaviour, traits and mental-health are partially heritable. Traditionally, studies have focused on quantifying the heritability of high-order characteristics, such as happiness or education attainment. Here, we quantify the degree of heritability of lower-level mental processes that likely contribute to complex traits and behaviour. In particular, we quantify the degree of heritability of cognitive and affective factors that contribute to the generation of beliefs about risk, which drive behavior in domains ranging from finance to health. Monozygotic and dizygotic twin pairs completed a belief formation task. We first show that beliefs about risk are associated with vividness of imagination, affective evaluation and learning abilities. We then demonstrate that the genetic contribution to individual differences in these processes range between 13.5 and 39%, with affect evaluation showing a particular robust heritability component. These results provide clues to which mental factors may be driving the heritability component of beliefs formation, which in turn contribute to the heritability of complex traits.

Predicting and remembering the behaviors of social targets: how prediction accuracy affects episodic memory

Background

Decades of research has investigated the relationship between memory and future thinking. Although some of this work has shown that memory forms the basis of making predictions about the future, less work has investigated how the outcome of those predictions (whether consistent or inconsistent with what one predicts) is later remembered. Limited past works suggests that memory for outcomes that are consistent with what one predicts are better remembered that predictions that are inconsistent. To advance understanding of the relationship between episodic memory and future thinking, the current investigation examines how the outcome of predictions affects memory after the predicted events takes place.

Methods

In this experiment, participants first learned trait information about social targets. Then, participants imagined scenarios involving targets and the self (i.e., the participant) and made predictions about which behaviors targets would perform based on the trait information associated with targets participants learned earlier. Participants were then told the behaviors the targets actually performed (i.e., prediction outcome), which was either consistent or inconsistent with predictions, before then taking a memory test for prediction outcomes (what the social target actually did).

Results

Results showed memory for prediction-consistent outcomes was better than for prediction-inconsistent outcomes, suggesting people exhibit enhanced memory for events that are in line with predictions based on existing contents of memory (e.g., what one knows; schemas), which is in line with the limited past work in this domain.

Conclusion

Overall, finding better memory for prediction-consistent outcomes may reflect an adaptive function in memory, where people show enhanced memory for episodes when they play out as predicted, and aligned with the current contents of memory.

"What has been is what will be"? Autobiographical memory and prediction of future events in depression

Depression is associated with negative autobiographical thinking regarding the past and the future. The association between the two temporal dimensions, however, has not been examined. In the present study, 32 participants diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and 32 controls completed a cued-recall task. Participants rated memories for positivity, frequency of occurrence to themselves/others, and expected recurrence, and listed planned social events and expected participation and enjoyment of these events. Memories of individuals diagnosed with MDD (vs. controls) were rated as more negative by both participants and objective coders. Individuals diagnosed with MDD were more negative in their evaluation of past events and in future expectations compared to controls. For both groups, expected recurrence of positive past events was associated with the frequency of these events occurring to oneself. For individuals diagnosed with MDD, however, expected recurrence of negative past events was associated exclusively with the frequency of these events occurring to self and not to others. Expectations for past events' recurrence predicted increased expected participation and enjoyment from social events in both groups. These results suggest that memory in MDD is associated with more negative future expectations, which may affect mood and motivation.

Spontaneous Activation of Event Details in Episodic Future Simulation

Episodic future simulation is supported by both the retrieval and recombination of episodic details. It remains unclear, however, how individuals retrieve episodic details from memory to construct possible future scenarios; for this people must use details related to the planned future events appropriately. A potentially relevant cognitive process is the spontaneous activation of intention observed in prospective memory (i.e., the intention superiority effect). Previous studies on prospective memory have shown that the approximation of retrieval opportunities for future intentions activate related information, suggesting that the intention superiority effect is context-sensitive. We hypothesized that the same cognitive process underlies future simulation—that is, details related to future events should spontaneously become activated at the appropriate moment of future simulation to make that simulation plausible. In Experiment 1, participants took part in future experiments and formed intentions to perform particular actions for the next experiments. Subsequently, they imagined events that could occur up until they arrived at the experimental room on the day of the next experiment. During this exercise, they did not imagine engaging in the required experimental task. We measured the conceptual activation of intention-related information via a recognition task using intended action words as targets. The results showed the intention superiority effect—concepts related to participants’ future intentions became active when envisioning future events approaching the next experiment. In Experiments 2 and 3, we ensured that the intention superiority effect in future simulation was context-sensitive by adding a control condition that required participants to imagine events other than the approaching future experiments. These results indicated that concepts related to the intended actions were spontaneously activated when imagined future events became both temporally and spatially close to the future simulation. Our finding suggests that spontaneous activation of details approaching the context of a future simulation helps in constructing plausible future scenarios.

Physiology of the cerebellum

The cerebellum is a central brain structure deeply integrated into major loops with the cerebral cortex, brainstem, and spinal cord. The cerebellum shows a complex regional organization consisting of modules with sagittal orientation. The cerebellum takes part in motor control and its lesions cause a movement incoordination syndrome called ataxia. Recent observations also imply involvement of the cerebellum in cognition and executive control, with an impact on pathologies like dyslexia and autism. The cerebellum operates as a forward controller learning to predict the precise timing of correlated events. The physiologic mechanisms of cerebellar functioning are still the object of intense research. The signals entering the cerebellum through the mossy fibers are processed in the granular layer and transmitted to Purkinje cells, while a collateral pathway activates the deep cerebellar nuclei (DCN). Purkinje cells in turn inhibit DCN, so that the cerebellar cortex operates as a side loop controlling the DCN. Learning is now known to occur through synaptic plasticity at multiple synapses in the granular layer, molecular layer, and DCN, extending the original concept of the Motor Learning Theory that predicted a single form of plasticity at the synapse between parallel fibers and Purkinje cells under the supervision of climbing fibers deriving from the inferior olive. Coordination derives from the precise regulation of timing and gain in the different cerebellar modules. The investigation of cerebellar dynamics using advanced physiologic recordings and computational models is now providing new clues on how the cerebellar network performs its internal computations.

Inducing involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using a laboratory paradigm

Although involuntary past and future mental time travel (MTT) has been examined outside the laboratory in diary studies, MTT has primarily been studied in the context of laboratory studies using voluntary construction tasks. In this study, we adapted and extended a paradigm previously used to elicit involuntary and voluntary memories (Schlagman & Kvavilashvili in Memory & Cognition, 36, 920-932, 2008). Our aim was - for the first time - to examine involuntary and voluntary future MTT under controlled laboratory conditions. The involuntary task involved a monotonous task that included potential cues for involuntary MTT. Temporal direction was manipulated between participants whereas retrieval mode was manipulated within participants. We replicated robust past-future differences, such as the future positivity bias. Additionally, we replicated key voluntary-involuntary differences: Involuntary future representations had similar characteristics as involuntary memories in that they were elicited faster, were more specific, and garnered more emotional impact than their voluntary counterparts. We also found that the future and past involuntary MTT led to both positive and negative mood impact, and that the valence of the impact was associated with the emotional valence of the event. This study advances scientific understanding of involuntary future representations in healthy populations and validates a laboratory paradigm that can be flexibly and systematically utilized to explore different characteristics of voluntary and involuntary MTT, which has not been possible within naturalistic paradigms.

Sharing the past and future among adolescents and their parents

This study explored how sharing past and future life events among late adolescents and their parents influenced the quality of their own time perspectives. Triads ( N =104) of female students and their parents described three important life events from their past and future. The results showed that adolescents who shared past and future life events predicted a positive impact on their time perspective, whereas parents displayed a more complex dynamism that included the impact of sharing the past on the future and vice versa. It is suggested that the impact of sharing past and future life events varies according to the age group.

Toward an understanding of anticipatory pleasure deficits in schizophrenia: Memory, prospection, and emotion experience

Anticipatory pleasure deficits have been observed in people with schizophrenia. Less is known about the extent to which interrelated processes that comprise anticipatory pleasure, including memory, prospection, and emotion experience are disrupted. We asked people with (n = 32) and without (n = 29) schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder to provide memory and prospection narratives in response to specific cues. Half of the prospections followed a memory task, and half followed a control task. People with schizophrenia generated memories similar in content and experience as controls even as they described them less clearly. However, people with schizophrenia were less likely to explicitly reference the past in their prospections, and their prospections were less detailed and richly experienced than controls, regardless of the task completed before prospection. People with schizophrenia reported similar levels of positive emotion (current and predicted) in positive prospections that followed the memory task, but less positive emotion than controls in positive prospections that followed the control task. Taken together, these results suggest that people with schizophrenia experience difficulties drawing from past experiences and generating detailed prospections. However, asking people with schizophrenia to recall and describe memories prior to prospection may increase the likelihood of drawing from the past in prospections, and may help boost current and predicted pleasure.

Depression and prospection

OBJECTIVES

Prospection, the mental representation of possible futures, is usually adaptive. When it goes awry, however, it disrupts emotion and motivation. A negative view of the future is typically seen as one symptom of depression, but we suggest that such negative prospection is the core causal element of depression. Here, we describe the empirical evidence supporting this framework, and we explore the implications for clinical interventions.

METHODS

We integrate several literatures: Using the database PsycInfo, we retrieved empirical studies with the keywords prospection, prediction, expectation, pessimism, mental simulation, future-thinking, future-directed thinking, foresight, and/or mental time travel, in conjunction with depression, depressed, or depressive.

RESULTS

Three kinds of faulty prospection, taken together, could drive depression: Poor generation of possible futures, poor evaluation of possible futures, and negative beliefs about the future. Depressed mood and poor functioning, in turn, may maintain faulty prospection and feed a vicious cycle. Future-oriented treatment strategies drawn from cognitive-behavioural therapy help to fix poor prospection, and they deserve to be developed further.

CONCLUSIONS

Prospection-based techniques may lead to transdiagnostic treatment strategies for depression and other disorders.

Do future thoughts reflect personal goals? Current concerns and mental time travel into the past and future

Our overriding hypothesis was that future thinking would be linked with goals to a greater extent than memories; conceptualizing goals as current concerns (i.e., uncompleted personal goals). We also hypothesized that current-concern-related events would differ from non-current-concern-related events on a set of phenomenological characteristics. We report novel data from a study examining involuntary and voluntary mental time travel using an adapted laboratory paradigm. Specifically, after autobiographical memories or future thoughts were elicited (between participants) in an involuntary and voluntary retrieval mode (within participants), participants self-generated five current concerns and decided whether each event was relevant or not to their current concerns. Consistent with our hypothesis, compared with memories, a larger percentage of involuntary and voluntary future thoughts reflected current concerns. Furthermore, events related to current concerns differed from non-concern-related events on a range of cognitive, representational, and affective phenomenological measures. These effects were consistent across temporal direction. In general, our results agree with the proposition that involuntary and voluntary future thinking is important for goal-directed cognition and behaviour.

The future is here: a review of foresight systems in anxiety and depression

Cognitive models of anxiety and depression have long suggested a central role for future-oriented thinking in these disorders. Experimental studies suggest that anxiety and depression are characterised by distinct future-oriented thinking profiles, and that these profiles are markedly different from those of asymptomatic adults. In this paper, we review these profiles and propose two explanatory models marked by two different neurocognitive systems. The Reconstructive Memory Model emphasises a role for emotionally driven learning and retrieval in episodic foresight (i.e., the construction of future-oriented scenarios), and the Valuation Model proposes that an overweighing of risk and uncertainty estimates can be invoked to explain the future-oriented thought patterns. We consider the effectiveness of interventions aimed at altering such thought patterns. We suggest that future research aimed at elucidating the neurobiological underpinnings of future-oriented thinking in anxiety and depression can play an important role in advancing development of effective biological and psychosocial interventions for these disorders.

The pivotal role of semantic memory in remembering the past and imagining the future

Episodic memory refers to a complex and multifaceted process which enables the retrieval of richly detailed evocative memories from the past. In contrast, semantic memory is conceptualized as the retrieval of general conceptual knowledge divested of a specific spatiotemporal context. The neural substrates of the episodic and semantic memory systems have been dissociated in healthy individuals during functional imaging studies, and in clinical cohorts, leading to the prevailing view that episodic and semantic memory represent functionally distinct systems subtended by discrete neurobiological substrates. Importantly, however, converging evidence focusing on widespread neural networks now points to significant overlap between those regions essential for retrieval of autobiographical memories, episodic learning, and semantic processing. Here we review recent advances in episodic memory research focusing on neurodegenerative populations which has proved revelatory for our understanding of the complex interplay between episodic and semantic memory. Whereas episodic memory research has traditionally focused on retrieval of autobiographical events from the past, we also include evidence from the recent paradigm shift in which episodic memory is viewed as an adaptive and constructive process which facilitates the imagining of possible events in the future. We examine the available evidence which converges to highlight the pivotal role of semantic memory in providing schemas and meaning whether one is engaged in autobiographical retrieval for the past, or indeed, is endeavoring to construct a plausible scenario of an event in the future. It therefore seems plausible to contend that semantic processing may underlie most, if not all, forms of episodic memory, irrespective of temporal condition.

Seeking a unified framework for cerebellar function and dysfunction: from circuit operations to cognition

Following the fundamental recognition of its involvement in sensory-motor coordination and learning, the cerebellum is now also believed to take part in the processing of cognition and emotion. This hypothesis is recurrent in numerous papers reporting anatomical and functional observations, and it requires an explanation. We argue that a similar circuit structure in all cerebellar areas may carry out various operations using a common computational scheme. On the basis of a broad review of anatomical data, it is conceivable that the different roles of the cerebellum lie in the specific connectivity of the cerebellar modules, with motor, cognitive, and emotional functions (at least partially) segregated into different cerebro-cerebellar loops. We here develop a conceptual and operational framework based on multiple interconnected levels (a meta-levels hypothesis): from cellular/molecular to network mechanisms leading to generation of computational primitives, thence to high-level cognitive/emotional processing, and finally to the sphere of mental function and dysfunction. The main concept explored is that of intimate interplay between timing and learning (reminiscent of the “timing and learning machine” capabilities long attributed to the cerebellum), which reverberates from cellular to circuit mechanisms. Subsequently, integration within large-scale brain loops could generate the disparate cognitive/emotional and mental functions in which the cerebellum has been implicated. We propose, therefore, that the cerebellum operates as a general-purpose co-processor, whose effects depend on the specific brain centers to which individual modules are connected. Abnormal functioning in these loops could eventually contribute to the pathogenesis of major brain pathologies including not just ataxia but also dyslexia, autism, schizophrenia, and depression.

Imagining novel futures: the roles of event plausibility and familiarity

The constructive episodic simulation hypothesis suggests that episodic memory supports the simulation of future events through extraction and recombination of stored information. The current study explicitly investigated the use of past episodic thought in the simulation of future scenarios. Participants simulated one of three possible scenarios, differing in plausibility and participants' prior experience of similar events. Participants recorded related memories and whether they were explicitly used during future event simulation. Memories were rated for source (self-experienced, other-experienced, or media). Findings suggest prior experience and event plausibility did not impact upon ease of future event simulation or the extent of memory usage during simulations. Differences emerged in the source of information used to assist future event simulation. These findings provide support for the hypothesis that episodic memories from a variety of sources are recombined when generating future simulations of novel events.