Constructive Episodic Simulation in Brain and Cognition

Abstract

A large and growing body of work demonstrates that remembering past events relies on constructive episodic retrieval of event details, while these same processes allow those details to be flexibly recombined into simulations of novel imagined future events, or episodic future thoughts. The present dissertation aims to advance our understanding of the implications of the similarities and differences between episodic retrieval and episodic future thinking. In Study 1, we extend the discussion of these parallels to personality pathology, characterizing self-bolstering tendencies in the episodic retrieval and future thinking of people scoring high in narcissistic grandiosity. In Study 2, we examine the neural correlates of the greater subjective spatial detail during episodic retrieval than during future thinking, finding a distinct set of regions that track spatial detail during retrieval but not future thinking. In Study 3, we draw upon work identifying the contribution of episodic retrieval processes to creativity and use hippocampal-targeted TMS to test whether this region causally supports both creative thinking and episodic simulation. In sum, this body of work broadens our understanding of constructive episodic retrieval, and how it relates to other cognitive processes.