title: Future-oriented mental time travel in individuals with disordered gambling.
abstract: This study investigated the ability of individuals with disordered gambling to imagine future events. Problem gamblers (n=35) and control participants (n=35) were asked to imagine positive and negative future events for three temporal distances (one week, one year, 5-10years). Then, a variety of phenomenological aspects of their future thoughts (e.g., sensory and contextual details, autonoetic consciousness) were rated. Compared to control subjects, problem gamblers generated fewer positive and negative events across all temporal distances, an impairment that was correlated to verbal fluency scores. Furthermore, problem gamblers rated imagined events as containing fewer sensory and contextual details, and lacking autonoetic consciousness. These findings demonstrate that problem gambling is associated with a reduced future-oriented mental time travel ability and, in particular, with diminished autonoetic consciousness when imagining future events.
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Psychologie Médicale et d'Addictologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium. Electronic address: xnoel@ulb.ac.be.
authors.forename: Xavier
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Noël
authors.affiliation: Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Brugmann, Psychiatry Department, Clinic of Behavioural Addictions, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Mélanie
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Saeremans
authors.affiliation: Laboratoire de Psychologie Médicale et d'Addictologie, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Belgium; Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Brugmann, Psychiatry Department, Clinic of Behavioural Addictions, Brussels, Belgium.
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Kornreich
authors.affiliation: Unité de Recherche Clinique Intersectorielle en Psychiatrie à vocation régionale Pierre Deniker, Centre Hospitalier Henri Laborit, Poitiers, France; Université de Poitiers - INSERM CIC-P 1402 du CHU de Poitiers - INSERM U 1084, Experimental and Clinical Neuroscience Laboratory - Groupement de Recherche CNRS 3557, Poitiers, France.
authors.forename: Nematollah
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Jaafari
authors.affiliation: Unité de Recherche en Psychologie et Neuroscience Cognitives, Université de Liège, Belgium.
authors.forename: Arnaud
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: D'Argembeau
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003243:Consciousness / Q000502:physiology*; D004532:Ego; D005260:Female; D005715:Gambling / Q000503:physiopathology*; D006801:Humans; D007092:Imagination / Q000502:physiology*; D008297:Male; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D008875:Middle Aged
keywords: Autonoetic consciousness; Future-oriented mental travel; Gambling