An fMRI investigation of the relationship between future imagination and cognitive flexibility

“The MNI co-ordinates of the peak voxels within each cluster were localized using Harvard-Oxford Atlases (Desikan et al., 2006).”

“The seed region did not show preferential functional connectivity to any regions in either the SN or the FPCN.”

“…hypothesis (Schacter & Addis, 2007), the storage of episodic memories as a pattern of features distributed across the cortex (Damasio, 1989; Schacter et al., 1998; Squire, 1992) facilitates the extraction of episodic details—such as familiar people, places and objects—as content for simulations.”

“In addition, the right angular gyrus, which has been shown to exhibit greater coupling with medial temporal lobe regions during autobiographical memory retrieval relative to rest (Bellana, Liu, Anderson, Moscovitch, & Grady, 2016), and has been linked with semantic processing (Binder et al., 2009; Price, Bonner, Peell…”

“singular images were overlaid on the MNI ICBM 152 nonlinear anatomical template image (Fonov et al., 2011) and percent signal change values from the peak voxels of clusters in the”

“, 2014), and interestingly the network associated with semantic memory overlaps considerably with the DMN (Binder and Desai, 2011; Binder et al., 2009; Burianova et al., 2010) further suggesting a critical interplay between these systems during simulation.”

“…between networks in response to externally-directed tasks that typically result in the suppression of the DMN (Sridharan, Levitin, & Menon, 2008; Uddin, 2015), our findings suggest that the left insula is also capable of increasing DMN activity when required during “salient internal thought”…”

“…in which the Congruent > Incongruent effect was greatest (9–12 s into the trial) corresponded to the elaboration phase of the imagined scenario (Addis et al., 2007), a plausible interpretation of the increased hippocampal activity during the Congruent condition is that it reflects increased…”

“This recombinatory ability is thought to be central to flexibly imagining the future – to construct as well as disassemble and rework the components of scenarios to create different outcomes to enhance future behavior (Addis, Pan, Musicaro, & Schacter, 2016; Schacter & Addis, 2007).”

“activity, especially lateral frontopolar cortex, including the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex (Benedek, Jauk, Sommer, Arendasy, & Neubauer, 2014; Gilhooly, Fioratou, Anthony, & Wynn, 2007; Niendam et al., 2012).”

“According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis (Schacter & Addis, 2007), the storage of episodic memories as a pattern of features distributed across the cortex (Damasio, 1989; Schacter et al., 1998; Squire, 1992) facilitates the extraction of episodic details—such as familiar people, places and objects—…”

“Indeed, the simulations generated by hippocampal amnesics are not only sparse in episodic detail but also less coherent than those of healthy controls (Hassabis et al., 2007).”

“By this account, the related details act as strong cues for the hippocampus to retrieve additional memory details associated with the three presented details (i.e. pattern completion; McClelland, McNaughton, & O’Reilly, 1995; Norman & O’Reilly, 2003).”

“…covary with engagement of regions in both the FPCN and DMN during episodic simulation, highlighting the complex interaction of these networks during forms of flexible cognition (Beaty et al., 2015, 2016; Ellamil et al., 2012; Spreng et al., 2010), including imagination of personal future scenarios.”

“Humans, however, can also construct mental simulations of novel future events in sufficient detail to support effective planning (Buckner & Carroll, 2007; Gilbert & Wilson, 2007; Schacter, 2012; Schacter et al., 2012; Schacter & Addis, 2007).”

“…covary with engagement of regions in both the FPCN and DMN during episodic simulation, highlighting the complex interaction of these networks during forms of flexible cognition (Beaty et al., 2015, 2016; Ellamil et al., 2012; Spreng et al., 2010), including imagination of personal future scenarios.”

“For ANOVAs, if the assumption of sphericity was violated (ε .90), a correction factor to account for the inflation in Type I error rate was applied to the degrees of freedom of the F-distribution (Geisser & Greenhouse, 1958).”

“…used extensively in studies on autobiographical memory and future simulation (e.g. Addis, McIntosh, Moscovitch, Crawley, & McAndrews, 2004; Addis, Roberts, & Schacter, 2011; Addis, Pan, et al., 2009; Burianova & Grady, 2007; Burianova et al., 2010; Martin et al., 2011; Spreng & Grady, 2010).”

“…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 & Ranganath, 2008; Hannula, Tranel, & Cohen, 2006; Staresina & Davachi, 2009).”

“…cognitive flexibility (referred to hereafter as cognitive flexibility) involves the ability to “break conventional or obvious patterns of thinking” (Dietrich, 2004, p.1014) in the service of generating novel ideas, and as such can be indexed by divergent thinking1 measures (Eslinger & Grattan,…”

“According to the constructive episodic simulation hypothesis (Schacter & Addis, 2007), the storage of episodic memories as a pattern of features distributed across the cortex (Damasio, 1989; Schacter et al., 1998; Squire, 1992) facilitates the extraction of episodic details—such as familiar people, places and objects—…”

“Resting-state functional connectivity studies have shown lateralized connectivity effects in the insula (Cauda et al., 2011; Sridharan, Levitin, & Menon, 2008), and further research is required to investigate how such lateralized functions are related to episodic simulation, as suggested by the…”

“We were interested in examining the functional connectivity of regions of interest in the FPCN (dorsolateral and rostrolateral prefrontal cortex) and SN (insula, anterior cingulate cortex) associated with the Incongruent condition, in line with previous reports of these regions coupling with the DMN during tasks that…”

“Rostrolateral prefrontal cortex has been associated with a diverse range of cognitive domains, including mentalizing, episodic retrieval and working memory (Gilbert et al., 2006), suggesting that it carries out domaingeneral processes (Wendelken, Chung, & Bunge, 2012).”

“…included slice-time correction, correction for motion and distortion (using SPM8’s Realign and Unwarp routine together with the Field Map toolbox (Hutton et al., 2002), co-registration with the anatomical scan, spatial normalization using parameters derived during segmentation to the Montreal…”

“…research has also implicated the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex in relational integration, reasoning, and the evaluation of self-generated thought (Christoff et al., 2001; Ellamil et al., 2012; Green, Kraemer, Fugelsang, Gray, & Dunbar, 2010; Wendelken & Bunge, 2009; Wendelken et al., 2012;…”

“Likewise, some of the between-subject variance in the amplitude of the BOLD signal is likely to derive from sources that vary across participants but are unrelated to the experimental conditions (e.g., physiological factors; Dubois & Adolphs, 2016).”

“evaluation of self-generated thought (Christoff et al., 2001; Ellamil et al., 2012; Green, Kraemer, Fugelsang, Gray, & Dunbar, 2010; Wendelken & Bunge, 2009; Wendelken et al., 2012; Wendelken, Nakhabenko, Donohue, Carter, & Bunge, 2007; Westphal, Reggente, Ito, & Rissman, 2016).”

“Indeed, it has been shown that one of the key components to generating novel responses in the AUT is the ability to inhibit the activation of memory details directly associated with a cue, thereby avoiding obvious responses (Beaty & Silvia, 2012).”

“This function is not restricted to a particular modality, applicable to “oddball” targets in both visual and auditory domains (e.g. Linden et al., 1999).”

“…patterns of thinking” (Dietrich, 2004, p.1014) in the service of generating novel ideas, and as such can be indexed by divergent thinking1 measures (Eslinger & Grattan, 1993; Tomer, Fisher, Giladi, & Aharon-Peretz, 2002), such as the flexibility measure of the Alternate Uses Task (AUT; Guilford,…”

“Most surprising of these regions was the left hippocampus—a region previously implicated in both future simulation (Addis & Schacter, 2012; Benoit & Schacter, 2015) and flexible, creative thinking (Duff, Kurczek, Rubin, Cohen, & Tranel, 2013; Ellamil et al., 2012; Rubin, Watson, Duff, & Cohen,…”

“This effect of reduced deactivation was most prominent in the left mid-anterior insula, a region previously shown to be strongly associated with task difficulty and error-monitoring (Bastin et al., 2016; Eckert et al., 2009; Kosillo & Smith, 2010; Taylor, Stern, & Gehring, 2007; Tregellas, Davalos, & Rojas, 2006).”

“This form of relational reasoning relies not merely on the retrieval of episodic memories but also on semantic information (e.g., schemas), thereby providing a plausible “semantic scaffolding” to guide the simulation of a novel yet coherent event (Irish et al., 2012; Irish & Piguet, 2013).”

“…been characterized as a key structure involved in the recombination of memory details during episodic future simulation (Addis & Schacter 2012; Benoit & Schacter, 2015), we predicted that increasing the disparateness of memory details (and hence increasing the demand placed on recombinatory…”

“…shown insula involvement in the processing of incongruent wordcolor combinations during the Stroop task (e.g. Chen, Lei, Ding, Li, & Chen, 2013; van Veen & Carter, 2005), semantically incongruent word-pairs (van der Heiden et al., 2014) and the atypical stressing of syllables during speech…”

“, schemas), thereby providing a plausible “semantic scaffolding” to guide the simulation of a novel yet coherent event (Irish et al., 2012; Irish and Piguet, 2013).”

“As is common practice in studies using event-related PLS (e.g., Addis et al., 2004, 2011; Hirshhorn, Grady, Rosenbaum, Winocur, & Moscovitch, 2012), we report results from TRs in which the effects were maximal (i.e., the TRs at which the spatial pattern comprised the greatest number of voxels);…”

“…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 & Ranganath, 2008; Hannula, Tranel, & Cohen, 2006; Staresina & Davachi, 2009).”

“Most surprising of these regions was the left hippocampus—a region previously implicated in both future simulation (Addis & Schacter, 2012; Benoit & Schacter, 2015) and flexible, creative thinking (Duff, Kurczek, Rubin, Cohen, & Tranel, 2013; Ellamil et al., 2012; Rubin, Watson, Duff, & Cohen,…”

“Event-related functional data were analyzed using a ST-PLS approach, a multivariate approach used extensively in studies on autobiographical memory and future simulation (e.g. Addis, McIntosh, Moscovitch, Crawley, & McAndrews, 2004; Addis, Roberts, & Schacter, 2011; Addis, Pan, et al., 2009; Burianova & Grady, 2007; B…”

“…first time (Gaesser, Spreng, McLelland, Addis, & Schacter, 2013; van Mulukom, Schacter, Corballis, & Addis, 2013), particularly when these events are specific in nature (Addis et al., 2010) and comprise greater amounts of detail (Addis & Schacter, 2008; Madore, Szpunar, Addis, & Schacter, 2016).”

“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; Ei…”

“…with the DMN, in particular the temporal pole and hippocampus (e.g. Benedek, Jauk, Fink, et al., 2014; Ellamil, Dobson, Beeman, & Christoff, 2012; Takeuchi et al., 2011) this activity reflects the associative component of the task and is distinct from the executive component of the task –…”

“…used extensively in studies on autobiographical memory and future simulation (e.g. Addis, McIntosh, Moscovitch, Crawley, & McAndrews, 2004; Addis, Roberts, & Schacter, 2011; Addis, Pan, et al., 2009; Burianova & Grady, 2007; Burianova et al., 2010; Martin et al., 2011; Spreng & Grady, 2010).”

“…analysis also showed that activity in the right lateral temporal pole —a region strongly associated with the representation of semantic information (Bonner & Price, 2013; Lambon Ralph, Pobric, & Jefferies, 2009; Lambon Ralph, Sage, Jones, & Mayberry, 2010) , including autobiographical semantic…”

“…(Addis, Sacchetti, Ally, Budson, & Schacter, 2009; Addis, Wong, & Schacter, 2008; Andelman, Hoofien, Goldberg, Aizenstein, & Neufeld, 2010; Hassabis, Kumaran, Vann, & Maguire, 2007; Klein, Loftus, & Kihlstrom, 2002; Kwan, Carson, Addis, & Rosenbaum, 2010; but see also Squire et al., 2010).”

“A list of 27 highly familiar (M = 5.48, SD = 1.01), imageable (M = 6.44, SD = 0.27) and concrete (M = 6.94, SD = 0.06) nouns was compiled from the Clark and Paivio (2004) extended norms.”

“Moreover, simulation-related hippocampal activity is greatest when constructing future events for the first time (Gaesser, Spreng, McLelland, Addis, & Schacter, 2013; van Mulukom, Schacter, Corballis, & Addis, 2013), particularly when these events are specific in nature (Addis et al., 2010) and comprise greater amount…”

“We have previously reported amygdala activation when employing versions of this recombination paradigm (Addis, Pan, et al., 2009; Martin et al., 2011), and have attributed this activity to novelty processing related to unusual detail sets (van Mulukom et al., 2013) .”

“Motivated by previous behavioral work highlighting the relationship between episodic future simulation and divergent thinking (Addis et al., 2016; Madore, Addis, & Schacter, 2015; Madore, Jing, & Schacter, 2016), we explored whether our behavioral and BOLD variables were associated with this form of cognitive flexibil…”

“Indeed, without access to semantic memory, future simulation is impaired (Duval et al., 2012; Irish, Addis, Hodges, & Piguet, 2012; Viard et al., 2014), and interestingly the network associated with semantic memory overlaps considerably with the DMN (Binder & Desai, 2011; Binder, Desai, Graves, &…”

“…2008; Addis et al., 2010, 2007; Addis, Pan, Vu, Laiser, & Schacter, 2009; Gilmore, Nelson, & McDermott, 2016; Szpunar, Watson, & McDermott, 2007; Viard et al., 2011; for a meta-analysis, see Benoit & Schacter, 2015) The hippocampus has been a focus in the study of recombination during…”

“Given that rostrolateral prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus are both involved in relational processing (Wendelken & Bunge, 2009), it is possible that one’s individual level of cognitive flexibility influences the strategy adopted during the task.”

“…deactivation was most prominent in the left mid-anterior insula, a region previously shown to be strongly associated with task difficulty and error-monitoring (Bastin et al., 2016; Eckert et al., 2009; Kosillo & Smith, 2010; Taylor, Stern, & Gehring, 2007; Tregellas, Davalos, & Rojas, 2006).”

“As is common practice in studies using event-related PLS (e.g., Addis et al., 2004, 2011; Hirshhorn, Grady, Rosenbaum, Winocur, & Moscovitch, 2012), we report results from TRs in which the effects were maximal (i.e., the TRs at which the spatial pattern comprised the greatest number of voxels);…”

“This effect of reduced deactivation was most prominent in the left mid-anterior insula, a region previously shown to be strongly associated with task difficulty and error-monitoring (Bastin et al., 2016; Eckert et al., 2009; Kosillo and Smith, 2010; Taylor et al., 2007; Tregellas et al., 2006).”

“In our study, participants were presented with three details that were to be integrated into imagined events, while Weiler et al. (2010) presented generic event cues (e.g. “Christmas dinner”).”

“the presidential election in 2032), suggesting the hippocampus may also play a role in the binding together of semantic details to produce complex semantic representations (Race et al., 2013).”

“These construction effects are evident even when controlling other possible determinants of hippocampal activity such as event novelty (Gaesser et al., 2013) and encoding (Martin, Schacter, Corballis, & Addis, 2011; for additional discussion see Schacter, Addis, & Szpunar, in press).”

“…reasoning, and the evaluation of self-generated thought (Christoff et al., 2001; Ellamil et al., 2012; Green, Kraemer, Fugelsang, Gray, & Dunbar, 2010; Wendelken & Bunge, 2009; Wendelken et al., 2012; Wendelken, Nakhabenko, Donohue, Carter, & Bunge, 2007; Westphal, Reggente, Ito, & Rissman, 2016).”

“…processing of incongruent wordcolor combinations during the Stroop task (e.g. Chen, Lei, Ding, Li, & Chen, 2013; van Veen & Carter, 2005), semantically incongruent word-pairs (van der Heiden et al., 2014) and the atypical stressing of syllables during speech perception (Rothermich & Kotz, 2013).”

“…deactivation was most prominent in the left mid-anterior insula, a region previously shown to be strongly associated with task difficulty and error-monitoring (Bastin et al., 2016; Eckert et al., 2009; Kosillo & Smith, 2010; Taylor, Stern, & Gehring, 2007; Tregellas, Davalos, & Rojas, 2006).”

“We have previously reported amygdala activation when employing versions of this recombination paradigm (Addis, Pan, et al., 2009; Martin et al., 2011), and have attributed this activity to novelty processing related to unusual detail sets (van Mulukom et al., 2013) .”

“Indeed, without access to semantic memory, future simulation is impaired (Duval et al., 2012; Irish, Addis, Hodges, & Piguet, 2012; Viard et al., 2014), and interestingly the network associated with semantic memory overlaps considerably with the DMN (Binder & Desai, 2011; Binder, Desai, Graves, & Conant, 2009; Buriano…”

“This proposal also bears resemblance to the notions of spreading activation (Conway and Pleydell-Pearce, 2001) and autobiographical memory chaining (Mace, 2014), whereby retrieval of autobiographical memories triggers the automatic activation or retrieval”

“…processing of incongruent wordcolor combinations during the Stroop task (e.g. Chen, Lei, Ding, Li, & Chen, 2013; van Veen & Carter, 2005), semantically incongruent word-pairs (van der Heiden et al., 2014) and the atypical stressing of syllables during speech perception (Rothermich & Kotz, 2013).”

“Recently, Wakusawa et al. (2015) reported insula activation when imagining using novel tools, or using familiar tools in novel situations.”

“Finally, cognitive evidence points toward a role for episodic future thinking in shaping an individual’s sense of self and identity [92,93], both cognitive and neuroimaging evidence indicate a connection between episodic future thinking and divergent creative thinking [94,95], and studies of spatial navigation show th…”

“…accounts of functional network interactions during divergent thinking (Beaty et al. 2016; Roberts and Addis 2017) and related tasks that involve core network coupling (Schacter et al. 2012, 2017; Moscovitch et al. 2016; Roberts et al. 2017). fMRI Resting-State Analyses: Univariate Seed-to-Voxel”

“Drawing from the previous literature, cognitive flexibility enhances the creativity, innovativeness among individuals to consider many perceptions of awareness and bring many solutions to a problem [19, 53, 54].”

“…evidence that the DMN as a whole is involved in several aspects of human cognition and behaviour, including episodic and semantic memory, imagination, decision-making, and theory of mind (Roberts et al., 2017; Schacter, 2012; Schacter et al., 2012; Schacter, Benoit, De Brigard, & Szpunar, 2015).”

“Alternatively, one could directly examine the within-participant correlation structure using singular value decomposition and obtain LVs for each participant [52,55].”

“It remains to be seen whether such interactions are related to the cognitive–behavioural findings reported here, but the fMRI findings do suggest that control processes are relevant to both divergent thinking and episodic future thinking (e.g., Roberts et al., 2017).”

“, for motor control: [5]; for attention: [6]; for language: [7]; for executive functions: [8]; for memory: [9]), demonstrating the pervasiveness of prediction in human cognition.”

“, scene) event scales (Roberts et al., 2017; Schacter & Addis, 2007), and separate events with overlapping details (Palombo et al.”

“Indeed, episodic simulations are involved in any number of creative tasks, from imagining the future to brainstorming to engaging in imagery-based exploration, and in each of these situations the person needs to be able to rely on a system flexible enough to tie together disparate ideas and experiences in a way that i…”

“…network (the key nodes of which are in the insular cortex), and the default mode network (including themedial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, lateral and medial temporal lobes, and posterior inferior parietal lobule) during a future prediction condition (Roberts et al., 2017).”

“This overlap between remembering and imagining could explain some kinds of false memories, such as confabulation [12, 14].”

“The inconsistency between these two findings (Roberts et al., 2017; Weiler et al., 2010) suggests that perceived plausibility during episodic hypothetical thinking — which both EFT and ECT belong to (De Brigard, 2014) — is likely more than just a matter of detail or effort.”

“…middle temporal gyrus, specifically, has been shown to be activated during the imagination of future plausible compared with less plausible events (Roberts et al., 2017), and to be involved in supporting a conceptual orientation during autobiographical memory retrieval (Gurguryan & Sheldon, 2019).”

“To our knowledge, only two studies (Addis et al., 2016; Roberts et al., 2017) investigated how divergent thinking, assessed using the alternative uses task (Guilford, 1967), relates to EFT.”