ReviewFrontiers in human neuroscience2015
Cognitive neuroscience of human counterfactual reasoning.
Review in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 25 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
25 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Common and Distinct Neural Mechanisms Underlying Risk Seeking and Risk Aversion: Evidence From the Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis.Human brain mapping · 2025Pooled it
- Chaotic and complex dynamics expose the limits of counterfactual reasoning.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- From chemistry to cognition: the adaptive origins of consciousness under constraint.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2026Article
- Computational basis of hierarchical and counterfactual information processing.Nature human behaviour · 2025Article
- Individual differences in decision-making shape how mesolimbic dopamine regulates choice confidence and change-of-mind.Nature neuroscience · 2025Article
- Update on "Emotion and autobiographical memory": 14 years of advances in understanding functions, constructions, and consequences.Physics of life reviews · 2024Review
- Callousness, exploitativeness, and tracking of cooperation incentives in the human default network.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- The asymmetric impact of decision-making confidence on regret and relief.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
- Creative minds at rest: Creative individuals are more associative and engaged with their idle thoughts.Creativity research journal · 2024Article
- Neural differences between internal and external episodic counterfactual thoughts.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Processing Attenuating NPIs in Indicative and Counterfactual Conditionals.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
- Toward a causal model of chronic back pain: Challenges and opportunities.Frontiers in computational neuroscience · 2022Review
- Integrating Philosophy of Understanding With the Cognitive Sciences.Frontiers in systems neuroscience · 2022Article
- Prefrontal tDCS attenuates counterfactual thinking in female individuals prone to self-critical rumination.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- Are Gettier cases disturbing?Philosophical studies · 2021Article
- Executive Cognitive Functions and Behavioral Control Differentially Predict HbA1c in Type 1 Diabetes across Emerging Adulthood.Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society : JINS · 2020Article
- Imagining the personal past: Episodic counterfactuals compared to episodic memories and episodic future projections.Memory & cognition · 2017Article
- Patients with schizophrenia activate behavioural intentions facilitated by counterfactual reasoning.PloS one · 2017Article
- Psychopathic individuals exhibit but do not avoid regret during counterfactual decision making.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2016Article
- The Burden of Cognitive Impairment in Patients With End-Stage Renal Disease and Impact on Dialysis Modality Choice.Kidney international reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Counterfactual reasoning is a hallmark of human thought, enabling the capacity to shift from perceiving the immediate environment to an alternative, imagined perspective. Mental representations of counterfactual possibilities (e.g., imagined past events or future outcomes not yet at hand) provide the basis for learning from past experience, enable planning and prediction, support creativity and insight, and give rise to emotions and social attributions (e.g., regret and blame). Yet remarkably little is known about the psychological and neural foundations of counterfactual reasoning. In this review, we survey recent findings from psychology and neuroscience indicating that counterfactual thought depends on an integrative network of systems for affective processing, mental simulation, and cognitive control. We review evidence to elucidate how these mechanisms are systematically altered through psychiatric illness and neurological disease. We propose that counterfactual thinking depends on the coordination of multiple information processing systems that together enable adaptive behavior and goal-directed decision making and make recommendations for the study of counterfactual inference in health, aging, and disease.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.