The DOI matches its Crossref record; 51 of the 56 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
Thinking of the future and past: the roles of the frontal pole and the medial temporal lobes
Abstract
Human lesion data have indicated that the frontal polar area might be critically involved in having an insight into one's future. Retrospective memory mediated by medial temporal lobes and related structures, on the other hand, could be used to extract one's future prospects efficiently. In the present study, we investigated the roles of these two brain structures in thinking of the future and past by using positron emission tomography (PET) and a naturalistic task setting. We measured regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) in healthy subjects while they were talking about their future prospects or past experiences, with regard to two different temporal windows (in years or days). Many areas in the frontal and the medial temporal lobes were activated during the future and past tasks compared with a control task requiring semantic retrieval. Among these, areas in anteromedial frontal pole showed greater activation during the future tasks than during the past tasks, showing significant effect of temporal distance from the present. Most areas in the medial temporal lobes showed greater or equivalent level of activations during the future tasks compared with the past tasks. The present results suggest that thinking of the future is closely related to retrospective memory, but that specific areas in the frontal pole and the medial temporal lobes are more involved with thinking of the future than that of the past.
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“Neuroimaging has revealed that memory and imagination engage the same brain networks, including the default mode network (DMN; Addis, Wong, & Schacter, 2007;Okuda et al., 2003;Szpunar, Watson, & McDermott, 2007; see Figure 1).”
From Mental Time Travel? A Neurocognitive Model of Event Simulation. (2020) · cites this paper as Okuda et al., 2003
In the citing paper
“Notably, these regions have been linked previously with episodic imagery, contextual detail and scene construction processes important to both past and future events (Fletcher et al., 1995;Bar and Aminoff, 2003;Okuda et al., 2003;Hassabis and Maguire, 2007;Hassabis et al., 2007a;Szpunar et al., 2009;Andrews-Hanna et al., 2010).”
From Considering the role of semantic memory in episodic future thinking: evidence from semantic dementia (2012) · cites this paper as Okuda et al., 2003
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Garbelli, F. (2026) · Colloquium · doi:10.7359/2404-2026-garb
Lesur, B., Corte, V. L., Gaston‐Bellegarde, A., COLÁS-BLANCO, I., & Piolino, P. (2026) · Acta Psychologica · doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2026.107385
Using episodic future thinking (or not?) to optimize decision-making
Atance, C. M., & McCormack, T. (2026) · Psychonomic Bulletin & Review · doi:10.3758/s13423-026-02974-9
Ongoing thoughts at rest reflect functional brain organization and behaviour
Ke, J., Chamberlain, T. A., Song, H., Corriveau, A., Zhang, Z., Martinez, T., Sams, L., Chun, M. M., Leong, Y. C., & Rosenberg, M. D. (2026) · Nature Human Behaviour · doi:10.1038/s41562-026-02563-9 · Cited by 8
Wen, H., Zhang, S., Yang, S., & Mo, L. (2026) · Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology · doi:10.1177/17470218261490745
Neural substrates of autobiographical memory and future thinking
Addis, D. R., & Valenzano, S. L. (2026) · Elsevier eBooks · doi:10.1016/b978-0-443-33040-7.00021-x
The moderating effect of time-perspective on the intention-behaviour relationship
Wickham, B. (2014) · Open University of Cape Town (University of Cape Town)
Metadata
- Authors
- Okuda, J., Fujii, T., Ohtake, H., Tsukiura, T., Tanji, K., Suzuki, K., Kawashima, R., Fukuda, H., Itoh, M., & Yamadori, A.
- Affiliations
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JP)
- Tohoku University (JP)
- National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (JP)
- Corresponding author
- Okuda, Jiro
- Venue
- NeuroImage
- Publisher
- Elsevier BV
- Published
- 2003-08
- Volume
- 19
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 1369-1380
- ISSN
- 1053-8119 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2057227973
- Cited by
- 607
- References
- 56
- Citations by year
- 2026: 16 · 2025: 16 · 2024: 26 · 2023: 18 · 2022: 17 · 2021: 23 · 2020: 26 · 2019: 27 · 2018: 29 · 2017: 32 · 2016: 40 · 2015: 40 · 2014: 40 · 2013: 39 · 2012: 41
- FWCI
- 2.44
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- closed
- Locations
- NeuroImage (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- UCL Discovery (University College London) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS-RFTF97L00202)
- Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (08279103)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory Processes and Influences
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Memory and Neural Mechanisms
- Keywords
- frontal pole, medial temporal lobe, retrospective memory, prospective memory, temporal distance, regional cerebral blood flow
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Attention, Awareness, Brain Mapping, Cerebral Cortex, Decision Making, Frontal Lobe, Humans, Male, Nerve Net, Problem Solving, Radiography, Mental Recall, Regional Blood Flow, Temporal Lobe, Time Perception, Tomography, Emission-Computed
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