Future Thinking and Other Functional Uses of Memory Flashcards
Future Thinking
Refers to the ability to imagine events in the future
○ Can be semantic or episodic
ex: know I want to live near the beach in 10 years (semantic)
ex:I can imagine living on the beach in 10 years, feeling the sand between my toes (episodic)
How often do we engage in future thinking?
- we think a lot about the future (30%)
Tulving and amnesic patient K.C. (1985)
-Motorcycle accident at age 30
-Damage to his hippocampus
and other regions
-Severely amnesic
- could not plan for the future
Goal of the study
The current study investigates the nature and necessity of MTL (midiam temporal lobe) involvement in future
thinking by testing the ability of amnesic patients with well characterized MTL lesions to
construct narratives about
(1) recent/remote past events,
(2) near/distant future events,
(3) visually presented pictures
Amnesic patients
A group of patients were tested as well as well-matched healthy controls
What was the task?
Question: What was the purpose of the picture description task?
episodic
● (1) Describe past events
ex: tell me all about a past event with details
● (2) Describe future events
ex:image you are at a beache in the future. tell me all about it
● (3) Describe a picture (control)
ex: what is in the picture
measure if they: can understand and keep a clear image and be able to say it
What did they find?
Patients could not recollect past events or imagine future ones (it didnt matter if it just happened or tomoroww or in a week they equality could not imagine the future and past )
but
they could describe a picture!
What did they find?
Future thinking was correlated with memory but not picture description
The correlation provides evidence that
(episodic) memory and future thinking are linked
Take Home?
In conclusion, the current results indicate that the MTL is critical for constructing event simulations when descriptive elements are not readily available, and suggest that the MTL may be particularly important for constructing future event representations that are
both detailed and specific.
they can create future sematic knolegede but not episodic
ex: i will be a doctor
Q: what will u do everyday as a doctor?
A: idk
Neuroimaging: Overlap between thinking about the future and about the past
different study
- Fmri
- genearate images of past and future
- the brain regions overlaped
Uniquely Human? (future thinking)
we dont know
● To protect their cache, scrub jays preferentially select storage locations that are out of sight of pilfering birds. Moreover, if the scrub jays have experience of pilfering the food of others, they will recache their own food if another bird was present when they first stored the food, as if to protect it from future theft
Video
- seeing pattern with heath aging
What is future thinking good for?
-
emotion regulation
ex: study so u dont get anxious for a test -
for decision making
ex:plan if its better to study or not study for a test -
spatial navigation
ex: find yourself by having a place to relay on in the future so u dont get lost -
proactive memory (dont forget)
ex: cues so they dont forget - postiti
study : Do impairments in future thinking have implications for decision making?
Would you prefer:
$30 Now $54 in 2 weeks
$54 in 2 years
people tend to prefer to chose thr 54 in 2 weeks but not two years (we dont like waiting to long)
Intertemporal Choice Task
they did this but with amnesic patients
(hipocampuse was demage)
-
Baseline” Condition:
Would you prefer:
$30 now $34 in 6 months (same as control group)
* Imagine Future” Condition (imagine an event in a specific spatial location)
Now Would you prefer:
$30 now $34 in 6 months
result
- control: they prefer later rewards now with the image future condition they prefer to wait even more
- but the amnesic stayed the same for both conditions
Do impairments in future thinking have implications for decision making?
———
the more u image something (in future event) primed to be more
take away
future thinking is important for decision making
