Abstract
The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in mental time travel toward the past and the future is debated. Here, patients with focal lesions to the vmPFC and brain-damaged and healthy controls mentally projected themselves to a past, present or future moment of subjective time (self-projection) and classified a series of events as past or future relative to the adopted temporal self-location (self-reference). We found that vmPFC patients were selectively impaired in projecting themselves to the future and in recognizing relative-future events. These findings indicate that vmPFC damage hinders the mental processing of and movement toward future events, pointing to a prominent, multifaceted role of vmPFC in future-oriented mental time travel.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 315-325 |
Number of pages | 11 |
Journal | Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 3 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 5 2021 |
Keywords
- Adult
- Aged
- Brain Injuries/psychology
- Female
- Humans
- Imagination
- Male
- Memory, Episodic
- Middle Aged
- Prefrontal Cortex/injuries