Temporal Construal Effects Are Independent of Episodic Future Thought.

Human thought is prone to biases. Some biases serve as beneficial heuristics to free up limited cognitive resources or improve well-being, but their neurocognitive basis is unclear. One such bias is a tendency to construe events in the distant future in abstract, general terms and events in the near future in concrete, detailed terms. Temporal construal may rely on our capacity to orient toward and/or imagine context-rich future events. We tested 21 individuals with impaired episodic future thinking resulting from lesions to the hippocampus or ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) and 57 control participants (aged 45-76 years) from Canada and Italy on measures sensitive to temporal construal. We found that temporal construal persisted in most patients, even those with impaired episodic future thinking, but was abolished in some vmPFC cases, possibly in relation to difficulties forming and maintaining future intentions. The results confirm the fractionation of future thinking and that parts of vmPFC might critically support our ability to flexibly conceive and orient ourselves toward future events.

No evidence of risk-taking or impulsive behaviour in a person with episodic amnesia: Implications for the role of the hippocampus in future-regarding decision-making.

Does advantageous decision-making require one to explicitly remember the outcome of a series of past decisions or to imagine future personal consequences of one's choices? Findings that amnesic people with hippocampal damage cannot form a clear preference for advantageous decks over many learning trials on the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT) have been taken to suggest that complex decision-making on the IGT depends on declarative (episodic) memory and hippocampal integrity. Alternatively, impaired IGT performance in amnesic individuals could be secondary to risk-taking and/or impulsive behaviour resulting from impaired episodic future thinking (i.e. prospection) known to accompany amnesia. We tested this possibility in the amnesic individual K.C. using the IGT and the Toronto Gambling Task (TGT), a novel task that dissociates impulsivity from risk-taking without placing demands on declarative memory. K.C. did not develop a preference for advantageous over disadvantageous decks on the IGT and, instead, showed a slight preference for short-term gains and an inability to acquire a more adaptive appreciation of longer-term losses. He also did not display impulsive or risk-taking behaviour on the TGT, despite a profound inability to imagine personal future experiences. These findings suggest that impaired decision-making on the IGT in amnesia is unlikely to reflect a predilection to act in the moment or failure to take future consequences into account. Instead, some forms of future-regarding decision-making may be dissociable, with performance on tasks relying on declarative learning or on episodic-constructive processes more likely to be impaired.

Osmoregulation in water-deprived rats drinking hypertonic saline: effect of area postrema lesions.

Rats drank rapidly when 0.3 M NaCl was the only drinking fluid available after overnight water deprivation, consuming approximately 200 ml/24 h. Although such large intakes of this hypertonic solution initially elevated plasma osmolality, excretion of comparable volumes of urine more concentrated than 300 meq Na(+)/l ultimately appears to restore plasma osmolality to normal levels. Rats drank approximately 100 ml of 0.5 M NaCl after overnight water deprivation, but urine Na(+) concentration (U(Na)) did not increase sufficiently to achieve osmoregulation. When an injected salt load exacerbated the initial dehydration caused by water deprivation, rats increased U(Na) to void the injected load and did not significantly alter 24-h intake of 0.3 or 0.5 M NaCl. Rats with lesions of area postrema had much higher saline intakes and lower U(Na) than did intact control rats; nonetheless, they appeared to osmoregulate well while drinking 0.3 M NaCl but not while drinking 0.5 M NaCl. Detailed analyses of drinking behavior by intact rats suggest that individual bouts were terminated by some rapid postabsorptive consequence of the ingested NaCl load that inhibited further NaCl intake, not by a fixed intake volume or number of licks that temporarily satiated thirst.

Subcortical aphasia and the problem of attributing functional responsibility to parts of distributed brain processes.

N&C's discussion is, in places, an exemplar of the sort of rigor and attention to detail that will bring us closer to an understanding of the functional organization of the brain. Indeed, it is this level of work that pushes us to reflect on the assumptions that undergird our research efforts. Our criticisms have developed four main points. First, the level of rigor applied to the consideration of basal ganglionic aphasia should extend to each application of the CPC method (thalamic aphasia included). Second, in our haste to identify specific brain systems with distinct cognitive functions we should not neglect the more basic question of the causal mechanisms by which the brain organizes behavior. Questions of "direct" versus "indirect" involvement of a particular organ in a cognitive function are only likely to distract our attention from this more basic and less inferentially perilous issue. Third, pure cases should no longer be considered touchstones against which all behavioral disturbances are measured. Reifying such ideals is more likely to shroud than reveal the brain's true complexity. Finally, the functions that we enshrine in particular brain regions should explain the particular character of the symptoms observed when they are damaged and should admit of independent verification.