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损坏后过去和将来的心理时间旅行中的不对称性

腹侧前额叶皮层（vmPFC）在精神时间过去和未来的旅行中的作用进行了辩论。在这里，患有vmPFC局灶性病变且大脑受损且健康的对照的患者在心理上将自己投射到主观时间的过去，现在或将来的时刻（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将来自我定位（自我参照）。我们发现vmPFC患者在预测自己的未来以及识别相对未来事件方面受到选择性的损害。这些发现表明vmPFC的损害阻碍了未来事件的心理处理和向未来事件的发展，这表明vmPFC在面向未来的心理时间旅行中具有突出的，多方面的作用。