ArticleSocial cognitive and affective neuroscience2021
Present and future self in memory: the role of vmPFC in the self-reference effect.
Article in Social cognitive and affective neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
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.
The trial behind it
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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
11 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Highly Superior Autobiographical Memory (HSAM): A Systematic Review.Neuropsychology review · 2025Pooled it
- Reward sensitivity is negatively associated with future self-continuity: the mediation role of functional connectivity between the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex.Brain structure & function · 2026Article
- Putting Emotional Memories in Context: The Constructionist Model of Emotional Memory.Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science · 2026Review
- Augmenting extinction with counterconditioning strengthens and sustains neural safety representations in PTSD.Translational psychiatry · 2026Article
- Neuroanatomical correlates of communication apprehension in young adults using voxel-based morphometry.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Self-referencing versus other-referencing in gambling: effects of vmPFC stimulation on decision-making and feedback processing.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2025Article
- The influence of psychological distance and topic type on inter-brain synchronization of emotion perception during face-to-face communication: an fNIRS hyperscanning study.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- Causal Roles of Ventral and Dorsal Neural Systems for Automatic and Control Self-Reference Processing: A Function Lesion Mapping Study.Journal of clinical medicine · 2024Article
- Taking time to compose thoughts with prefrontal schemata.Experimental brain research · 2024Article
- Retrograde amnesia abolishes the self-reference effect in anterograde memory.Experimental brain research · 2023Article
- Therapeutic interventions impact brain function and promote post-traumatic growth in adults living with post-traumatic stress disorder: A systematic review and meta-analysis of functional magnetic resonance imaging studies.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Self-related information is remembered better than other-related information (self-reference effect; SRE), a phenomenon that has been convincingly linked to the medial prefrontal cortex. It is not clear whether information related to our future self would also have a privileged status in memory, as medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) regions respond less to the future than to the present self, as if it were an 'other'. Here we ask whether the integrity of the ventral mPFC (vmPFC) is necessary for the emergence of the present and future SRE, if any. vmPFC patients and brain-damaged and healthy controls judged whether each of a series of trait adjectives was descriptive of their present self, future self, another person and that person in the future and later recognized studied traits among distractors. Information relevant to the present (vs future) was generally recognized better, across groups. However, whereas healthy and brain-damaged controls exhibited strong present and future SREs, these were absent in vmPFC patients, who concomitantly showed reduced certainty about their own present and anticipated traits compared to the control groups. These findings indicate that vmPFC is necessary to impart a special mnemonic status to self-related information, including our envisioned future self, possibly by instantiating the self-schema.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
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.