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De Brigard, Felipe

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De Brigard

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Felipe

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De Brigard, Felipe
Author's Publications: search.filters.isAuthorOfPublication.546681d0-2b72-45e9-975d-90a8a80d5428

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    Coming to Grips With the Past: Effect of Repeated Simulation on the Perceived Plausibility of Episodic Counterfactual Thoughts
    (SAGE Publications, 2013) De Brigard, Felipe; Szpunar, Karl; Schacter, Daniel
    When people revisit previous experiences, they often engage in episodic counterfactual thinking: mental simulations of alternative ways in which personal past events could have occurred. The present study employed a novel experimental paradigm to examine the influence of repeated simulation on the perceived plausibility of upward, downward, and neutral episodic counterfactual thoughts. Participants were asked to remember negative, positive, and neutral autobiographical memories. One week later, they self-generated upward, downward, and neutral counterfactual alternatives to those memories. The following day, they resimulated each of those counterfactuals either once or four times. The results indicate that repeated simulation of upward, downward, and neutral episodic counterfactual events decreases their perceived plausibility while increasing ratings of the ease, detail, and valence of the simulations. This finding suggests a difference between episodic counterfactual thoughts and other kinds of self-referential simulations. Possible implications of this finding for pathological and nonpathological anxiety are discussed.
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    Predictive Memory and the Surprising Gap
    (Frontiers Media S.A., 2012) De Brigard, Felipe
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    Remembering what could have happened: Neural correlates of episodic counterfactual thinking
    (Elsevier, 2013-07-09) De Brigard, Felipe; Addis, Donna R.; Ford, Jaclyn H.; Schacter, Daniel; Giovanello, Kelly S.
    Recent evidence suggests that our capacities to remember the past and to imagine what might happen in the future largely depend on the same core brain network that includes the middle temporal lobe, the posterior cingulate/retrosplenial cortex, the inferior parietal lobe, the medial prefrontal cortex, and the lateral temporal cortex. However, the extent to which regions of this core brain network are also responsible for our capacity to think about what could have happened in our past, yet did not occur (i.e., episodic counterfactual thinking), is still unknown. The present study examined this issue. Using a variation of the experimental recombination paradigm (Addis, Pan, Vu, Laiser, & Schacter, 2009. Neuropsychologia. 47: 2222–2238), participants were asked both to remember personal past events and to envision alternative outcomes to such events while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Three sets of analyses were performed on the imaging data in order to investigate two related issues. First, a mean-centered spatiotemporal partial least square (PLS) analysis identified a pattern of brain activity across regions of the core network that was common to episodic memory and episodic counterfactual thinking. Second, a non-rotated PLS analysis identified two different patterns of brain activity for likely and unlikely episodic counterfactual thoughts, with the former showing significant overlap with the set of regions engaged during episodic recollection. Finally, a parametric modulation was conducted to explore the differential engagement of brain regions during counterfactual thinking, revealing that areas such as the parahippocampal gyrus and the right hippocampus were modulated by the subjective likelihood of counterfactual simulations. These results suggest that episodic counterfactual thinking engages regions that form the core brain network, and also that the subjective likelihood of our counterfactual thoughts modulates the engagement of different areas within this set of regions.
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    The Role of Attention in Conscious Recollection
    (Frontiers Research Foundation, 2012) De Brigard, Felipe
    Most research on the relationship between attention and consciousness has been limited to perception. However, perceptions are not the only kinds of mental contents of which we can be conscious. An important set of conscious states that has not received proper treatment within this discussion is that of memories. This paper reviews compelling evidence indicating that attention may be necessary, but probably not sufficient, for conscious recollection. However, it is argued that unlike the case of conscious perception, the kind of attention required during recollection is internal, as opposed to external, attention. As such, the surveyed empirical evidence is interpreted as suggesting that internal attention is necessary, but probably not sufficient, for conscious recollection. The paper begins by justifying the need for clear distinctions among different kinds of attention, and then emphasizes the difference between internal and external attention. Next, evidence from behavioral, neuropsychological, and neuroimaging studies suggesting that internal attention is required for the successful retrieval of memorial contents is reviewed. In turn, it is argued that internal attention during recollection is what makes us conscious of the contents of retrieved memories; further evidence in support of this claim is also provided. Finally, it is suggested that internal attention is probably not sufficient for conscious recollection. Open questions and possible avenues for future research are also mentioned.