Neural correlates of personal goal processing during episodic future thinking and mind-wandering: An ALE meta-analysis.

The ability to imagine the future is a complex mental faculty that depends on an ensemble of cognitive processes supported by an extended set of brain regions. Our aim here was to shed light on one key component of future thinking--personal goal processing--and to determine its neural correlates during both directed and spontaneous forms of thoughts. To address this question, we performed separate ALE meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies of episodic future thinking (EFT), mind-wandering, and personal goal processing, and then investigated the commonalities and differences in brain activity between these three domains. The results showed that the three domains activated a common set of brain regions within the default network and, most notably, the medial prefrontal cortex. This finding suggests that the medial prefrontal cortex mediates the processing of personal goals during both EFT and mind-wandering. Differences in activation were also observed, and notably regions supporting cognitive control processes (the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) were recruited to a lesser extent during mind-wandering than experimentally directed future thinking, suggesting that different kinds of self-generated thoughts may recruit varying levels of attentional control abilities.