Future planning: default network activity couples with frontoparietal control network and reward-processing regions during process and outcome simulations.
We spend much of our daily lives imagining how we can reach future goals and what will happen when we attain them. Despite the prevalence of such goal-directed simulations, neuroimaging studies on planning have mainly focused on executive processes in the frontal lobe. This experiment examined the neural basis of process simulations, during which participants imagined themselves going through steps toward attaining a goal, and outcome simulations, during which participants imagined events they associated with achieving a goal. In the scanner, participants engaged in these simulation tasks and an odd/even control task. We hypothesized that process simulations would recruit default and frontoparietal control network regions, and that outcome simulations, which allow us to anticipate the affective consequences of achieving goals, would recruit default and reward-processing regions. Our analysis of brain activity that covaried with process and outcome simulations confirmed these hypotheses. A functional connectivity analysis with posterior cingulate, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior inferior parietal lobule seeds showed that their activity was correlated during process simulations and associated with a distributed network of default and frontoparietal control network regions. During outcome simulations, medial prefrontal cortex and amygdala seeds covaried together and formed a functional network with default and reward-processing regions.
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA and Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, Human Neuroscience Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853 gerlach@fas.harvard.edu.
Kathy D
KD
Gerlach
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA and Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, Human Neuroscience Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853.
R Nathan
RN
Spreng
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA and Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, Human Neuroscience Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853.
Kevin P
KP
Madore
Department of Psychology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA and Laboratory of Brain and Cognition, Human Neuroscience Institute, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, 14853.
Daniel L
DL
Schacter
D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D005625:Frontal Lobe / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D006040:Goals; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D007092:Imagination; D007600:Judgment; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D009415:Nerve Net / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology; D009434:Neural Pathways / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology; D010100:Oxygen / Q000097:blood; D010296:Parietal Lobe / Q000098:blood supply / Q000502:physiology*; D012201:Reward; D055815:Young Adult
D010100:Oxygen
default network; episodic simulation; fMRI; frontoparietal network; planning; reward processing