The episodic component contains personally experienced events situated in subjective time and space, while the semantic component contains de-contextualized generic knowledge of one’s past (Tulving, Schacter, McLachlan, & Moscovitch, 1988). In recent years, it has been argued that the ability to remember the personal past Mitomycin C mouse is closely related to the ability to imagine possible future scenarios (Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997; Wheeler, Stuss, & Tulving, 1997). Autonoetic consciousness – the kind of consciousness

critically involved in becoming aware of the self in subjective time extending from the personal past through the present to the personal future, is the hallmark of episodic memory and episodic future thinking (Tulving, 1985; Wheeler et al., 1997). Autonoetic consciousness is thought to give rise to a sense of mental time travel, whereby one travels backwards in time to re-experience events in the personal past or forward in time to pre-experience personal events that may happen in the future (Suddendorf & Corballis, 1997). The idea that remembering the past and imagining the future rely on common neurocognitive processes has been supported by neuroimaging findings, demonstrating robust and consistent

overlap in neural activity within prefrontal, medial-temporal lobe (MTL), and posterior cortical regions, including the posterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortex, when remembering past events and imagining novel scenarios (Addis, Wong, and Schacter, 2007; Botzung, Denkova, & Manning, MCE 2008; Okuda et al., 2003; Szpunar, Watson, & McDermott, 2007), supporting the notion of a core brain network Osimertinib mouse underlying both processes (Buckner & Carroll, 2007; Hassabis & Maguire, 2007; Schacter, Addis, & Buckner, 2007; Spreng, Mar, & Kim, 2009). Additional support is found in neuropsychological studies showing that amnesic patients unable to remember events from their personal past show a corresponding deficit in imagining possible events in their personal future (Hassabis, Kumaran, Vann, & Maguire, 2007; Klein, Loftus, & Kihlstrom, 2002; Tulving, 1985). In the light of such findings,

Schacter and Addis (2007) proposed a connection between the constructive nature of episodic memory and episodic future thinking. According to their constructive episodic simulation hypothesis, the ability to flexibly recombine features of previous experiences allows one to simulate an endless number of possible future scenarios. This ability to mentally simulate the future provides a unique opportunity to test alternative plans of actions without the potential risks associated with actually carrying out these plans, and thus improving the chances of an adaptive behavioural outcome. In addition, the ability to foresee consequences of planned actions may facilitate behavioural flexibility and self control, in that it makes it possible to postpone an immediate reward to achieve long-term goals (Suddendorf & Busby, 2005).