[Mental time travel - the neurocognitive basis of future thinking]

The ability to travel in time mentally, i. e. the re-experiencing of personal past events as well as the ability to mentally simulate potential future events, forms part of the "episodic memory" concept. Evidence for the notion that episodic memory and episodic future thinking share a common neural basis stems from different lines of research, namely functional neuroimaging, assessment of clinical groups, behavioral investigations of the phenomenological characteristics of mental time travel, and developmental research. The present article summarises the evidence from these lines of research which indicate a common neural network underlying episodic memory and episodic future thinking, consisting of medial prefrontal, medial temporal, medial parietal, lateral parieto-occipital, as well as lateral temporal regions. Both abilities, episodic memory and future thinking, seem to develop around the age of four years, feature similar phenomenological characteristics, and are impaired to a similar extent by brain lesions and brain dysfunction. These findings yielded different hypotheses concerning the function and evolutional significance of the mental time travel network, which will also be addressed.