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Episodic Future Thought: An Emerging Concept.

Karl K Szpunar1

  • 1Department of Psychology, Washington University, St. Louis, MO karl.szpunar@gmail.com.

Perspectives on Psychological Science : a Journal of the Association for Psychological Science
|July 11, 2015
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Simulating future events, known as episodic future thought, is closely linked to remembering past personal experiences. New research suggests both episodic and semantic memory are crucial for constructing these future thoughts.

Keywords:
episodic future thoughtepisodic memorymental simulationmental time travel

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Area of Science:

  • Cognitive Neuroscience
  • Psychology

Background:

  • Episodic future thought, the ability to mentally simulate future personal experiences, is a key area of research.
  • This capacity is closely linked to memory recall and is studied across psychology and neuroscience.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To review current knowledge on episodic future thought.
  • To identify unresolved issues and explore the relationship between memory systems and future thinking.

Main Methods:

  • Review of neuroimaging, neuropsychology, and clinical psychology research.
  • Analysis of the interplay between episodic and semantic memory in future thought construction.

Main Results:

  • Episodic future thought is strongly associated with the ability to recall past personal episodes.
  • The role of semantic (abstracted) representations in future thought has been under-explored.

Conclusions:

  • Both episodic and semantic memory are vital for constructing episodic future thoughts.
  • The interaction between these memory systems may depend on information accessibility.