The Common Neural Basis of Autobiographical Memory, Prospection, Navigation, Theory of Mind, and the Default Mode: A Quantitative Meta-analysis

By R. Nathan Spreng, Raymond A. Mar, A. Kim. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 2009

2,150 citations recorded by the source corpus.

A core brain network has been proposed to underlie a number of different processes, including remembering, prospection, navigation, and theory of mind [Buckner, R. L., & Carroll, D. C. Self-projection and the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 49–57, 2007]. This purported network—medial prefrontal, medial-temporal, and medial and lateral parietal regions—is similar to that observed during default-mode processing and has been argued to represent self-projection [Buckner, R. L., & Carroll, D. C. Self-projection and the brain. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 49–57, 2007] or scene-construction [Hassabis, D., & Maguire, E. A. Deconstructing episodic memory with construction. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 11, 299–306, 2007]. To date, no systematic and quantitative demonstration of evidence for this common network has been presented. Using the activation likelihood estimation (ALE) approach, we conducted four separate quantitative meta-analyses of neuroimaging studies on: (a) autobiographical memory, (b) navigation, (c) theory of mind, and (d) default mode. A conjunction analysis between these domains demonstrated a high degree of correspondence. We compared these findings to a separate ALE analysis of prospection studies and found additional correspondence. Across all domains, and consistent with the proposed network, correspondence was found within the medial-temporal lobe, precuneus, posterior cingulate, retrosplenial cortex, and the temporo-parietal junction. Additionally, this study revealed that the core network extends to lateral prefrontal and occipital cortices. Autobiographical memory, prospection, theory of mind, and default mode demonstrated further reliable involvement of the medial prefrontal cortex and lateral temporal cortices. Autobiographical memory and theory of mind, previously studied as distinct, exhibited extensive functional overlap. These findings represent quantitative evidence for a core network underlying a variety of cognitive domains.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience, Experimental and Cognitive Psychology

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/65ab3415072bded398074af8ecc57f410ed75b07

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Citations in the corpus

The wandering brain: Meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies of mind-wandering and related spontaneous thought processes (2015, positive): “…been observed in autobiographical memory recall (Spreng et al., 2009), mentalizing or ‘theory of mind’ (Spiers and Maguire, 2006a; Spreng et al., 2009), creative generation and evaluation of artwork (Ellamil et al., 2012), and goal-directed prospection (Gerlach et al., 2014; Spreng et al., 2009).”
Patterns of Brain Activity Supporting Autobiographical Memory, Prospection, and Theory of Mind, and Their Relationship to the Default Mode Network (2010, background): “Nevertheless, a quantitative summary of multiple independent observations has found substantial neural overlap between these three cognitive domains (Spreng, Mar, & Kim, 2009 ).”
Functional neuroimaging of autobiographical memory. (2007, background): “passive rest referred to as the default network overlaps with the regions supporting AM retrieval (for reviews, see Buckner et al., 2008; Spreng et al., 2009).”
The role of the arts and humanities in human flourishing: A conceptual model (2018, background): “…changes neural activity corresponding to the Default Mode network, which has been linked to autobiographical memory, theory of mind, prospection (spreng et al., 2009), and creativity (Kühn et al., 2014), is activated when viewing moving art (vessel, starr, & rubin, 2012) or listening to…”
Signature of consciousness in the dynamics of resting-state brain activity (2015, background): “To explore the dependence of results on the parameter k (number of predefined brain states), we explored a broad range of values for k = [5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10] (main text only shows results for k = 7, highlighted in this figure).”
Functional-Anatomic Fractionation of the Brain's Default Network (2010, positive): “Tasks that encourage subjects toward internal mentation, including autobiographical memory, thinking about one’s future, theory of mind, self-referential and affective decision making, tend to activate regions within the default network (reviewed in Ochsner et al., 2004; Buckner et al., 2008; Spreng”