Author ORCID Identifier
Preston P. Thakral: 0000-0001-6603-6186
Daniel L. Schacter: 0000-0002-2460-6061
Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2022
Publication Title
Cognitive Neuroscience
Abstract
Affective future thinking allows us to prepare for future outcomes, but we know little about neural representation of emotional future simulations. We used a multi-voxel pattern analysis to determine whether patterns of neural activity can reliably distinguish between positive and negative future simulations. Neural patterning in the anterior cingulate and ventromedial prefrontal cortices distinguished positive from negative future simulations, indicating that these regions code for the emotional valence of future events. These results support prior findings that anterior medial regions contain representations of emotions across various stimuli, and contribute to identifying potential rewarding outcomes of future events. More broadly, these results demonstrate that the phenomenological features of future thinking can be decoded using neural activity.
Keywords
emotion, Future simulation, MVPA
Volume
13
Issue
1
First Page
10
Last Page
14
DOI
10.1080/17588928.2021.1906638
ISSN
17588928
Recommended Citation
Devitt, Aleea L.; Thakral, Preston P.; and Schacter, Daniel L., "Decoding the Emotional Valence of Future Thoughts" (2022). Psychology: Faculty Publications, Smith College, Northampton, MA.
https://scholarworks.smith.edu/psy_facpubs/244
Comments
Peer reviewed accepted manuscript.