The role of ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in mental time travel toward the past and the future is debated. Here, patients with focal lesions to the vmPFC and brain-damaged and healthy controls mentally projected themselves to a past, present or future moment of subjective time (self-projection) and classified a series of events as past or future relative to the adopted temporal self-location (self-reference). We found that vmPFC patients were selectively impaired in projecting themselves to the future and in recognizing relative-future events. These findings indicate that vmPFC damage hinders the mental processing of and movement toward future events, pointing to a prominent, multifaceted role of vmPFC in future-oriented mental time travel.

中文翻译：

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vmPFC 损伤后过去和未来心理时间旅行的不对称


腹内侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC）在过去和未来的心理时间旅行中的作用存在争议。在这里，vmPFC 局灶性损伤的患者以及脑损伤和健康对照者在心理上将自己投射到主观时间的过去、现在或未来时刻（自我投射），并将一系列事件相对于所采用的时间分类为过去或未来。自我定位（自我参考）。我们发现 vmPFC 患者在预测自己未来和识别相对未来事件方面选择性受损。这些发现表明，vmPFC 损伤阻碍了对未来事件的心理处理和运动，表明 vmPFC 在面向未来的心理时间旅行中发挥着突出的、多方面的作用。