Department of Psychology and Neuroscience Graduate Diploma Program, York University, Toronto, Canada.
Hippocampus. 2012 Jun;22(6):1215-9. doi: 10.1002/hipo.20981. Epub 2011 Oct 13.
Deficits in episodic memory are associated with deficits in the ability to imagine future experiences (i.e., mental time travel). We show that K.C., a person with episodic amnesia and an inability to imagine future experiences, nonetheless systematically discounts the value of future rewards, and his discounting is within the range of controls in terms of both rate and consistency. Because K.C. is neither able to imagine personal uses for the rewards nor provide a rationale for selecting larger future rewards over smaller current rewards, this study demonstrates a dissociation between imagining and making decisions involving the future. Thus, although those capable of mental time travel may use it in making decisions about future rewards, these results demonstrate that it is not required for such decisions.
情景记忆缺陷与想象未来经历的能力（即心理时间旅行）缺陷有关。我们表明，患有情景性遗忘症且无法想象未来经历的 K.C. 仍然系统地低估了未来奖励的价值，而且他的折扣率和一致性都在对照组的范围内。因为 K.C. 既无法想象奖励的个人用途，也无法为选择较大的未来奖励而不是较小的当前奖励提供理由，所以这项研究表明想象和做出涉及未来的决策之间存在分离。因此，尽管那些能够进行心理时间旅行的人可能会在做出有关未来奖励的决策时使用它，但这些结果表明，做出这些决策并不需要进行心理时间旅行。
