Imagination

Imagination is our gift as a species to move purposefully towards what does not yet exist and walk willingly through the unknown to get there. It has a power to change what seems possible and so to shift what becomes possible. Moral imagination looks inward as much as it acts outward. It works with a long sense of time and opens its eyes to assumpt... See more

Thus, it remains an open question as to whether the hippocampus is necessary for future simulation.

A related line of enquiry is to determine not only whether the hippocampus is active during future simulation but whether it makes a critical and necessary contribution. While it has been long established that a functioning hippocampus is necessary for the retrieval of detailed autobiographical memories (for a review, see Moscovitch et al., 2005), ... See more

The hippocampus has been a focus in the study of recombination during simulation – perhaps unsurprising given the established role of this structure in relational processing, including the binding together of disparate elements during working memory as well as episodic encoding and retrieval (Axmacher et al., 2010; Eichenbaum, 2001; Hannula & R... See more

There is indirect evidence to support this idea. For instance, individuals tend to act in a way that is consistent with or constrained by how they have imagined themselves in those situations (Johnson and Sherman, 1990), implying that some record of that simulation influences later behavior. There is typically a high correspondence of stated intent... See more