The medial temporal lobe (MTL) appears to be a major brain region involved in
reconstruction during episodic memory and future thinking. The hippocampus, a core
MTL structure long established to be integral to episodic memory, has been proposed to
be a key region involved in binding disparate elements together during mental
construction of past and future scenarios (Hassabis & Maguire, 2007). In a
demonstrative study, amnesic adults with severe bilateral hippocampal damage and
deficient episodic memory were also significantly impaired at imagining new experiences
(e.g., “a day at the beach”), despite spared general world knowledge (Hassabis et al.,
2007). Amnesic individuals reported imagined scenarios that were fragmented and
markedly impoverished in spatial coherence. These individuals not only lose access to
certain life experiences in their past, but also have marked difficulty at projecting
themselves in future time-space.