Differential contributions of hippocampus and medial prefrontal cortex to self-projection and self-referential processing

摘要: Converging evidence points to a neural network that supports range of abilities including remembering the past, thinking about future, and introspecting oneself others. Neuroimaging studies find hippocampal activation during event construction tasks, patients with amnesia are impaired in their ability (re)construct events past future. constructed experiences similarly implicate medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), but it remains unknown whether mPFC is critical for such processes. The current study compares performance five bilateral damage, six demographically matched comparison participants on an task. Participants were given neutral cue word asked across four time conditions: real imagined present, These narratives analyzed number internal external details quantify extent episodic (re)experiencing. Given literature involvement self-referential processing, we also self-references. damage did not differ from healthy construct highly detailed periods displayed disruptions incorporation self. Patients showed opposite pattern; they results suggest differential contributions hippocampus distributed various forms self-projection.