| Past and future aspects of mental time travel activate a common network of brain regions and are impaired together in adult amnesic individuals. However, it is unknown if the two abilities are developmentally dissociable: can the development of future imagining be selectively preserved when early hippocampal damage precludes full development of past remembering? Moreover, the nature of the mechanism assumed to underlie past and future aspects of mental time travel is unclear. We present two case studies of amnesic individuals to address these questions. Results from these studies suggest that a common mechanism that relies on intact hippocampal function indeed underlies the development of both past future thought but that this mechanism is independent of time: the essence of deficit in amnesic individuals appears to be in (re)construction. Further work is required to determine what other types of future-oriented thought may be preserved in amnesia. |
