LeDoux's work on the emotional brain has had broad impact in neuroscience and psychology. Here, we discuss an aspect of the emotional brain that we have examined in our laboratory during the past two decades: emotional future simulations or constructed mental representations of positive and negative future experiences. Specifically, we consider research concerning (i) neural correlates of emotional future simulations, (ii) how emotional future simulations impact subsequent cognition and memory, (iii) the role of emotional future simulations in worry and anxiety, and (iv) individual differences in emotional future simulation related to narcissistic grandiosity. The intersection of emotion and future simulation is closely linked to some of LeDoux's primary scientific concerns.

Creativity researchers have recently sought to standardize idea assessment via computational measures of semantic distance: the degree of conceptual dissimilarity between words. The relationship between semantic distance and creativity has traditionally been described using linear models, with the embedded assumption that as semantic distance increases, so does the creative quality of ideas. However, informal observations would suggest that distant associations may sometimes become too incoherent or nonsensical to be considered creative. Using generalized additive models (GAMs), we explored the non-linear nature of this relationship across three divergent thinking tasks: alternate uses, question asking, and metaphor generation. Our results revealed a consistent pattern: human ratings of creativity increased with semantic distance up to a certain threshold (between 0.9 and 1), after which point, additional semantic distance did not translate into more subjectively creative ideas. These findings provide a more nuanced understanding of the interplay between semantic distance and creativity than previously available, suggesting that the relationship is best characterized as curvilinear rather than linear. This work highlights a potential "sweet spot" for semantic distance in creative ideation and holds important implications for models of creativity.

Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM) is a rare form of enhanced memory in which individuals demonstrate an extraordinary ability to remember details of their personal lives with high levels of accuracy and vividness. Neuroimaging studies have identified brain regions - specifically, midline areas within the default network - associated with remembering events from one's past. Extending this research on the neural underpinnings of autobiographical memory, the present study utilizes graph theory analyses to compare functional brain connectivity in a cohort of HSAM (n = 12) and control participants (n = 29). We perform seed-based analysis in resting-state fMRI data to assess how specific cortical regions within the autobiographical memory network are differentially connected in HSAM individuals. Additionally, we apply a whole-brain connectivity analysis to identify differences in brain hub-network topology associated with enhanced autobiographical memory. Seed-based results show converging patterns of increased connectivity in HSAM across midline areas. Whole-brain analysis also reveals enhanced connectivity across medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortex in HSAM individuals. Together, these results extend prior research, highlighting cortical hubs within the default network associated with enhanced autobiographical memory.

The autobiographical interview has been used in more than 200 studies to assess the content of autobiographical memories. In a typical experiment, participants recall memories, which are then scored manually for internal details (episodic details from the central event) and external details (largely non-episodic details). Scoring these narratives requires a significant amount of time. As a result, large studies with this procedure are often impractical, and even conducting small studies is time-consuming. To reduce scoring burden and enable larger studies, we developed an approach to automatically score responses with natural language processing. We fine-tuned an existing language model (distilBERT) to identify the amount of internal and external content in each sentence. These predictions were aggregated to obtain internal and external content estimates for each narrative. We evaluated our model by comparing manual scores with automated scores in five datasets. We found that our model performed well across datasets. In four datasets, we found a strong correlation between internal detail counts and the amount of predicted internal content. In these datasets, manual and automated external scores were also strongly correlated, and we found minimal misclassification of content. In a fifth dataset, our model performed well after additional preprocessing. To make automated scoring available to other researchers, we provide a Colab notebook that is intended to be used without additional coding.

As artificial intelligence (AI) advances in the realm of generative art, a critical question emerges: does human creativity matter? That is, do more-creative people produce more-creative AI-assisted artwork? To explore this, we conducted an online, pre-registered study in which we measured individual differences in creativity through two divergent-thinking tasks: The Alternate Uses Task and the Divergent Associations Task. Separately, participants produced creative wordsets for a hypothetical AI-art generator, which we then input into DALL-E to generate images. A group of trained raters independently assessed these images for creativity. Results revealed that both DAT performance and semantic diversity of the wordsets positively associated with the creativity of the AI-assisted images, suggesting that individuals with stronger divergent-thinking skills, and those who generated more-creative wordsets, tended to inspire more-creative AI-assisted artwork. Mediation analyses supported this conclusion by demonstrating a significant pathway between individual creative ability and AI-art creativity, mediated by semantic diversity. However, while our models yielded significant results, the effect sizes were modest, suggesting that the relationship between individual creative ability and AI-assisted creative outputs is relatively small. Taken together, these results suggest that while individual creativity appears to contribute to the quality of AI-assisted artwork, its influence may be relatively limited.

ObjectiveSuicidal individuals experience ambivalent states where they simultaneously consider death and the continuation of their lives. But we have little understanding of how suicidal individuals, particularly youth, mentally construct their future lives. To address this knowledge gap, we aimed to examine episodic future thinking and the related cognitive process of episodic memory among suicidal and nonsuicidal adolescents.MethodWe administered a performance-based measure of episodic future thinking to community-based adolescents (N = 176, 15-19 years; 69.3% female at birth, 57.1% identifying with a racial minoritized group) and examined the concurrent and predictive validity of details generated within an imagined future event in relation to suicidal ideation (SI; ranging from passive desire of wanting to be dead to active desire to kill oneself).ResultsGreater difficulty imagining discrete actions within an imagined positive future event was associated with past and subsequent SI, although these associations were largely accounted for by depressive symptoms. In contrast, greater difficulty imagining action-related details tied to either positive or negative future events predicted SI 6 months later controlling for symptoms of both anxiety and depression, SI history, and narrative style.ConclusionsFindings from this study offer an initial glimpse into how suicidal adolescents imagine their future and may inform the design of interventions intended to promote a stronger desire for life than death.

It is well established that people scoring high in narcissism fantasize about a grandiose future. However, little research has examined whether narcissism is associated with actually setting unrealistic, grandiose future goals for oneself. In the present study, we pool three independent adult samples (total N = 482) to evaluate the relationship between three dimensions of narcissism (agentic extraversion, antagonism, and narcissistic neuroticism) and self-reported likelihood of setting statistically unlikely goals (e.g., creating world peace). Through a series of bootstrapped correlation and regression analyses, we find that participants scoring higher in agentic extraversion and antagonism are more likely to set unrealistic goals, whereas participants scoring higher in narcissistic neuroticism are less likely to set unrealistic goals. When controlling for covariance between these narcissism dimensions as well as self-esteem and history of manic/hypomanic symptoms, agentic extraversion emerges as the strongest correlate of setting unrealistic goals. Overall, this study demonstrates that narcissism, and particularly agentic extraversion, is associated with intending to set grandiose future goals.

This article presents an obituary for Endel Tulving. Tulving's educational and professional careers are summarized. His work in the field of human memory is detailed. It is noted that Tulving's look at the field of verbal learning in the late 1950s persuaded him that the dominant associative tradition missed many important aspects of human memory. His research found that at the time of retrieval, memory for the original event may be successfully reinstated only by contextual cues that interact in a complementary fashion with the specifically encoded memory trace, a process that Tulving referred to as "synergistic ecphory". He is also known for his work on memory systems. In his book, Elements of Episodic Memory published in 1983, Tulving proposed that memory for experienced events, episodic memory, should be distinguished from general knowledge of the world, semantic memory, and from procedural memory, the learned ability to perform such skilled procedures as riding a bicycle or playing a musical instrument. He also proposed an evolutionary framework for these different but related systems, suggesting that simple animals show only procedural memory, more complex animals are consciously aware of their knowledge of the world, but only humans possess episodic memory-the ability to use "mental time travel" to consciously recreate past experiences and to imagine possible future events. Although known initially for his purely cognitive behavioral research, during the 1980s and 1990s, Tulving increasingly incorporated neuropsychological and neuroimaging approaches into his work. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

Little empirical work has examined future thinking in narcissistic grandiosity. We here extend prior work finding that people scoring high in grandiosity have self-bolstering tendencies in remembering past events, and we consider whether these tendencies extend to imagining future events. Across an initial study (N = 112) and replication (N = 169), participants wrote about remembered past events and imagined future events in which they embodied or would embody either positive or negative traits. Participants then rated those events on several subjective measures. We find that people scoring higher in grandiosity remember past events in which they embody positive traits with greater detail and ease than past events in which they embody negative traits. These same effects persist when people scoring high in grandiosity imagine possible events in their future. Those scoring higher in grandiosity endorse thinking about positive events in their past and future more frequently than negative events, and they judge positive future events as more plausible than negative future events. These tendencies did not extend to objective detail provided in their written narratives about these events. Taken together, these findings demonstrate that grandiosity is associated with self-bolstering tendencies in both remembering the past and imagining the future.

When faced with a difficult problem, people often rely on past experiences. While remembering clearly helps us reach solutions, can retrieval also lead to misperceptions of our abilities? In three experiments, participants encountered “worst case scenarios” they likely had never experienced and that would be difficult to navigate without extensive training (e.g., bitten by snake). Learning brief tips improved problem-solving performance later, but retrieval increased feelings of preparation by an even larger margin. This gap occurred regardless of whether people thought that tips came from an expert or another participant in the study, and it did not reflect mere familiarity with the problems themselves. Instead, our results suggest that the ease experienced while remembering, or retrieval fluency, inflated feelings of preparation.

Episodic memory relies on constructive processes that support simulating novel future events by flexibly recombining elements of past experiences, and that can also give rise to memory errors. In recent studies, we have developed methods to characterize the cognitive and neural processes that support conscious experiences linked to this process of episodic recombination, both when people simulate novel future events and commit recombination-related memory errors. In this Perspective, we summarize recent studies that illustrate these phenomena, and discuss broader implications for characterizing the basis of conscious experiences associated with constructive memory from a cognitive neuroscience perspective.

Mental time travel is often presented as a singular mechanism, but theoretical and empirical considerations suggest that it is composed of component processes. What are these components? Three hypotheses about the major components of mental time travel are commonly considered: (i) remembering and imagining might, respectively, rely on different processes, (ii) past- and future-directed forms of mental time travel might, respectively, rely on different processes, and (iii) the creation of episodic representations and the determination of their temporal orientation might, respectively, rely on different processes. Here, we flesh out the last of these proposals. First, we argue for ‘representational continuism’: the view that different forms of mental travel are continuous with regard to their core representational contents. Next, we propose an updated account of episodic recombination (the mechanism generating these episodic contents) and review evidence in its support. On this view, episodic recombination is a natural kind best viewed as a form of compositional computation. Finally, we argue that episodic recombination should be distinguished from mechanisms determining the temporal orientation of episodic representations. Thus, we suggest that mental travel is a singular capacity, while mental time travel has at least two major components: episodic representations and their temporal orientation. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Elements of episodic memory: lessons from 40 years of research’.

As artificial intelligence (AI) continues to evolve, particularly in the context of generative art, a critical question emerges about the future role of human creativity: In the age of generative AI, does individual creative ability still matter? Here, we explored this question via an online, pre-registered study involving 375 participants who completed gold-standard divergent-thinking tasks and generated semantic wordsets for AI-art creation using an AI-art generator. We generated the resultant images from these participant-produced wordsets through DALL-E, and a group of trained raters independently assessed the images for general creativity. Findings revealed widespread positive correlations among the creativity tasks. Specifically, the semantic diversity of wordsets and performance on the gold-standard creativity tasks served as significant positive predictors for the creativity of the AI-generated images, indicating that individuals possessing greater divergent-thinking capabilities, and who generated more-creative word prompts for an art generator, produced more-creative AI-generated artwork. These results suggest that, despite the democratizing effect of AI-art generation, human creativity remains an important component in directing AI-produced creative outcomes like visual art. The implications of these findings are discussed in the context of creative industries and the science of creativity.

Abstract Background Despite increased attention on treatment and prevention for suicidal adolescents, we know little about potential intervention targets. Episodic future thinking—the ability to imagine detailed, personal, and future‐oriented events—is a modifiable cognitive process that has been linked with suicidal ideation (SI) in adolescents. However, until now its modifiability has only been tested in adults. Method Adolescents (N = 176, ages 15–19; 71% SI) completed performance‐based measures of episodic future thinking (i.e., Experimental Recombination Paradigm) and memory immediately before and after an Episodic Specificity Induction (ESI). Results Adolescents produced a greater number of future episodic details after (vs. before) the ESI but showed no change in non‐episodic details (e.g., semantic information). Patterns of change in episodic future thinking were not moderated by SI history. Adolescents overall did not demonstrate change in past episodic detail counts after the ESI. However, there were select moderating effects of SI history on this effect. Conclusion Results show that episodic future thinking can change immediately following an episodic specificity induction among adolescents, regardless of whether they have previously experienced SI. This demonstration of within‐person change constitutes a foundational first step in examining malleability of episodic future thinking in adolescents and offers preliminary evidence of a cognitive mechanism that may be leveraged in service of reducing adolescents' SI.

Over time, memories lose episodic detail and become distorted, a process with serious ramifications for eyewitness identification. What are the processes contributing to such transformations over time? We investigated the roles of post-learning sleep and retrieval practice in memory accuracy and distortion, using a naturalistic story recollection task. Undergraduate students listened to a recording of the "War of the Ghosts," a Native American folktale, and were assigned to either a sleep or wake delay group, and either a retrieval practice or listen-only study condition. We found higher accuracy after sleep compared to wake in the listen-only condition, but not in the retrieval practice condition. This effect was driven by participants in the wake, retrieval practice condition showing superior memory compared to the wake, listen-only condition. A similar pattern was found for memory distortion, with both sleep and retrieval practice being associated with more inferences of nonpresented, but story-related information, compared to the wake, listen-only condition. These findings suggest both sleep and retrieval practice contribute to narrative memory stabilization and distortion.

Imagining the future, like recalling the past, relies on the ability to retrieve and imagine a spatial context. Research suggests that eye movements support this process by reactivating spatial contextual details from memory, a process termed gaze reinstatement. While gaze reinstatement has been linked to successful memory retrieval, it remains unclear whether it supports the related process of future simulation. In the present study, we recorded both eye movements and audio while participants described familiar locations from memory and subsequently imagined future events occurring in those locations while either freely moving their eyes or maintaining central fixation. Restricting viewing during simulation significantly reduced self-reported vividness ratings, supporting a critical role for eye movements in simulation. When viewing was unrestricted, participants spontaneously reinstated gaze patterns specific to the simulated location, replicating findings of gaze reinstatement during memory retrieval. Finally, gaze-based location reinstatement was predictive of simulation success, indexed by the number of internal (episodic) details produced, with both measures peaking early and co-varying over time. Together, these findings suggest that the same oculomotor processes that support episodic memory retrieval - that is, gaze-based reinstatement of spatial context - also support episodic simulation.

Individuals experiencing suicidal thoughts and behaviors (STBs) show less specificity and positivity during episodic future thinking (EFT). Here, we present findings from two studies aiming to (1) further our understanding of how STBs may relate to neural responsivity during EFT and (2) examine the feasibility of modulating EFT-related activation using real-time fMRI neurofeedback (rtfMRI-nf). Study 1 involved 30 individuals with major depressive disorder (MDD; half with STBs) who performed an EFT task during fMRI, for which they imagined personally-relevant future positive, negative, or neutral events. Positive EFT elicited greater ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) activation compared to negative EFT. Importantly, the MDD + STB group exhibited reduced vmPFC activation across all EFT conditions compared to MDD-STB; although EFT fluency and subjective experience remained consistent across groups. Study 2 included rtfMRI-nf focused on vmPFC modulation during positive EFT for six participants with MDD + STBs. Results support the feasibility and acceptability of the rtfMRI-nf protocol and quantitative and qualitative observations are provided to help inform future, larger studies aiming to examine similar neurofeedback protocols. Results implicate vmPFC blunting as a promising treatment target for MDD + STBs and suggest rtfMRI-nf as one potential technique to explore for enhancing vmPFC engagement.

How do we assess the quality of an idea? Current theories suggest that episodic memory contributes to creative ideation, implicating memory retrieval and mental simulation in the generation of creative ideas; however, the role of memory in creative evaluation has not been systematically examined. Across two independent online samples (Study 1 n = 50, Study 2 n = 626), we explore how episodic retrieval supports the evaluation of two distinct aspects of creativity: novelty and effectiveness. In both studies, participants were presented with a series of creative ideas - responses on the alternate uses task - and were asked to independently rate them for novelty/effectiveness. Following each rating, participants were prompted to reflect on their process and type a brief description about how they made their evaluation. We apply computational linguistic analysis to quantify the prevalence of episodic/perceptual details (sights, sounds, etc.) in each evaluation, along with past-focused and future-focused words. Consistent with prior work, we observe a negative correlation (r=-.39) between novelty and effectiveness ratings. Ordinal logistic regression models indicate that perceptual detail and temporal orientation of evaluations are predictive of novelty and effectiveness ratings. We show that people refer more to the past when evaluating familiar, effective ideas; conversely, people refer more to the future when evaluating highly novel, less effective ideas. Overall, these results are consistent with the hypothesis that episodic retrieval supports the evaluation of creative ideas.

Recent developments in computerized scoring via semantic distance have provided automated assessments of verbal creativity. Here, we extend past work, applying computational linguistic approaches to characterize salient features of creative text. We hypothesize that, in addition to semantic diversity, the degree to which a story includes perceptual details, thus transporting the reader to another time and place, would be predictive of creativity. Additionally, we explore the use of generative language models to supplement human data collection and examine the extent to which machine-generated stories can mimic human creativity. We collect 600 short stories from human participants and GPT-3, subsequently randomized and assessed on their creative quality. Results indicate that the presence of perceptual details, in conjunction with semantic diversity, is highly predictive of creativity. These results were replicated in an independent sample of stories (n = 120) generated by GPT-4. We do not observe a significant difference between human and AI-generated stories in terms of creativity ratings, and we also observe positive correlations between human and AI assessments of creativity. Implications and future directions are discussed.

Abstract This chapter reviews research on memory errors conducted during the past two decades. It is organized around six major themes that have emerged from, or have been strengthened by, recent research: (a) Susceptibility to different kinds of memory distortions involves some common but largely distinct processes; (b) it is important to characterize subjective experiences associated with memory distortions; (c) sensory reactivation can distinguish between true and false memories under limited conditions; (d) memory specificity has multiple effects on memory distortion; (e) reactivation, recombination, and simulation processes can contribute to memory distortion; and (f) evidence is mounting in support of an adaptive perspective on memory distortion. It is argued that the study of memory errors has made significant advances during the past two decades and that these advances have contributed importantly to the understanding of memory as a fundamentally constructive process.