The Impact of Self-processing on Mental Time Travel

February 20, 2026 updated by: Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpA

How Self-processing Affects Mental Time Travel: a Neuropsychological Study

Mental time travel (MTT) refers to the ability to project oneself backward into the past or forward into the future to envision past and future events. This study examines the role of the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) in orienting toward past and future events during MTT.

Study Overview

Status

Recruiting

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Detailed Description

Mental Time Travel (MTT) is the ability to project oneself toward another specific temporal location, in the past or future subjective time. Specifically, it requires placing mental events on a subjective timeline by remembering the past or imagining the future. Regarding neural correlates, the subjective experience of remembering the past is associated with the lateral parietal cortex, especially in the inferior parietal lobule (IPL). The involvement of parietal areas in MTT for past events has been confirmed by neuropsychological and neuromodulation studies. Patients with neglect, following a lesion of the right parietal cortex, show a deficit in judging events that occurred before a specific temporal reference, suggesting an impairment in the representation of past events. Using transcranial alternate continuos stimulation (tACS) D'Angelo and colleagues (2023) showed that parietal beta frequencies selectively alter participants' ability to project into the past, but not into the future. Regarding future processing, the involvement of prefrontal cortex has been widely reported. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) plays a key role in planning, while the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is involved in future scenario construction. In addition, vmPFC patients are unable to project into the future and anticipate events ahead, supporting a crucial role of the vmPFC in future construction.

Parietal and prefrontal areas are also involved in the processing of self-related information. In particular, the right lateral parietal cortex is more involved in retrieving self-related information than other-related information. Regarding the role of prefrontal regions in processing the self, the vmPFC shows greater activity when imagining a mental scenario related to the self rather than to another person.

To better understand MTT ability, two important questions arise from the review of the relevant literature. First, does self-related information affect our ability to mentally travel in time? If so, may these two processes interact in the same brain areas? VmPFC might be a good candidate for the interaction between future projection and self-processing: self-related stimuli could increase one's ability to "move" to future MTT.

Regarding past and self-related processing, the role of the right lateral parietal cortex is still unclear. IPL neural activity could underlie both processes, thus revealing a crucial centre for the interplay between MTT past projection and self-processing (autobiographical component of MTT).

The purpose of the present study is to investigate the influence of self-related stimuli in MTT tasks in patients with focal brain injury. Specifically, the authors will test for the first time whether the temporal distance between present time and the likelihood that a life event will occur (or has already occurred) is different whether the event is referred to one's own face or someone else's face.

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Estimated)

66

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Contact

Study Contact Backup

Study Locations

  • Italy
    • Mantova
      • Castel Goffredo, Mantova, Italy, 46042

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

  • Adult
  • Older Adult

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • the absence of general cognitive impairment, assessed by neuropsychological testing
  • the presence of a focal brain lesion will be adopted as an inclusion criterion for patients.

Exclusion Criteria:

  • psychiatric disorders
  • multiple brain lesions

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Basic Science
  • Allocation: Non-Randomized
  • Interventional Model: Parallel Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Active Comparator: Healthy participants
All participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task.
Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task
A psychophysical task (D'Angelo et al., 2023) will be adopted. In this task, a projection in time will be "induced" by faces of different ages. Face stimuli will be presented with a short sentence describing a particular life event, commonly occurring around 60. Participants will perform a two-alternative forced-choice task under two experimental conditions. In the "past projection" condition, they will indicate whether it is "likely" or "unlikely" that the person of the face shown could have experienced the indicated event 10 years earlier. In the "future projection," they will indicate whether it is "likely" or "unlikely" that the person depicted will experience the indicated event in 10 years.
Behavioral: Age Estimation control task
In this task participants will estimate the age of the faces adopted as stimuli.
Behavioral: Lifeline task
In this task participants will be instructed to associated each event with the age at which they believe it typically occurred.
Experimental: vmPFC patients
All participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task.
Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task
A psychophysical task (D'Angelo et al., 2023) will be adopted. In this task, a projection in time will be "induced" by faces of different ages. Face stimuli will be presented with a short sentence describing a particular life event, commonly occurring around 60. Participants will perform a two-alternative forced-choice task under two experimental conditions. In the "past projection" condition, they will indicate whether it is "likely" or "unlikely" that the person of the face shown could have experienced the indicated event 10 years earlier. In the "future projection," they will indicate whether it is "likely" or "unlikely" that the person depicted will experience the indicated event in 10 years.
Behavioral: Age Estimation control task
In this task participants will estimate the age of the faces adopted as stimuli.
Behavioral: Lifeline task
In this task participants will be instructed to associated each event with the age at which they believe it typically occurred.
Active Comparator: not-vmPFC patients
All participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task.
Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task
A psychophysical task (D'Angelo et al., 2023) will be adopted. In this task, a projection in time will be "induced" by faces of different ages. Face stimuli will be presented with a short sentence describing a particular life event, commonly occurring around 60. Participants will perform a two-alternative forced-choice task under two experimental conditions. In the "past projection" condition, they will indicate whether it is "likely" or "unlikely" that the person of the face shown could have experienced the indicated event 10 years earlier. In the "future projection," they will indicate whether it is "likely" or "unlikely" that the person depicted will experience the indicated event in 10 years.
Behavioral: Age Estimation control task
In this task participants will estimate the age of the faces adopted as stimuli.
Behavioral: Lifeline task
In this task participants will be instructed to associated each event with the age at which they believe it typically occurred.

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Likely Responses of events (Percentage)
Time Frame: At baseline

If the vmPFC plays a crucial role in MTT, by activating and orienting to general knowledge about common life events, then vmPFC patients' probability judgments (% Likely Responses) in the MTT task should not be modulated coherently as a function of the perceived age of the portrayed faces and the Past vs. Future Projection condition.

Considering the prominent role played by the vmPFC in future-oriented cognition, we expect that deficits in MTT would be more marked in the Future compared to the Past Projection condition.
At baseline

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Temporal estimation of cultural prototypical life event (years)
Time Frame: At baseline
The deficit found in MTT may be related to an impairment in activating general knowledge about common events. If this is the case, it should also result in an impairment in temporally placing cultural events appropriately on a time-line representing the duration of life (in years, from birth to death). Moreover, these difficulties in the temporal ordering of life events would be more marked for relatively future compared to relatively past events.
At baseline

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpA

Collaborators

Centro Studi e Ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive (Cesena)

Investigators

  • Principal Investigator: Giuliana Vezzadini, MD, Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start (Actual)

December 1, 2024

Primary Completion (Estimated)

June 30, 2026

Study Completion (Estimated)

September 30, 2026

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

January 27, 2025

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 7, 2025

First Posted (Actual)

February 12, 2025

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Actual)

February 23, 2026

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

February 20, 2026

Last Verified

February 1, 2026

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • ICS Maugeri CE 2717

Plan for Individual participant data (IPD)

Plan to Share Individual Participant Data (IPD)?

NO

Drug and device information, study documents

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated drug product

No

Studies a U.S. FDA-regulated device product

No

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

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