Imagination

The distinctive feature of imagination, therefore, rests on its capacity of creating new mental images by combining and modifying stored perceptual information in novel ways and by inserting this information in a subjective view of the world: hence it is related to his self-awareness. In other words, imagination is not simply the organization, iden... See more

Particularly relevant to the idea of episodic simulation is the process of forming “implementation intentions” (Gollwitzer, 1999) which involve imagining and rehearsing a plan with reference to the specific future context in which it will be executed. Research has shown that creating implementation intentions significantly increases the likelihood ... 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

In recent years, neuroimaging has provided evidence to suggest that imagining the future relies on much of the same neural machinery as remembering the past. One hypothesis that such findings motivate is that memories must be reactivated in order to extract the information needed to “flesh out” detailed simulations. Indeed, if simulations involve t... See more

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

a particularly vivid form of future thinking: the imaginative construction or simulation of scenarios that might occur in one’s future. We hypothesized that the flexible use of episodic details from memory during imaginative simulations of the future can help to understand constructive aspects of memory, such as its susceptibility to distortion (se... See more

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

This suggests that the linear relationship between plausibility and hippocampal activity observed in the Weiler et al. study may not hold for the entire spectrum of plausibility. Instead, extremely implausible events may be associated with decreased hippocampal activity (relative to less implausible events), as observed in the current study where h... 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

While most people tend to be optimistic, those suffering from depression and anxiety have a bleak view of the future — and that in fact seems to be the chief cause of their problems, not their past traumas nor their view of the present. While traumas do have a lasting impact, most people actually emerge stronger afterward. Others continue strugglin... See more