The hippocampus distinguishes immediate goals from future ones

Summary: Researchers discovered how the brain prioritizes immediate and distant goals. Their study found that the hippocampus processes immediate goals faster and differently than future goals.

This insight may help understand psychiatric disorders such as depression, which affect goal-setting skills. The findings reveal substantial differences in brain activity and behavior related to goal prioritization.

Key facts:

1. Hippocampus activity: Immediate goals activate the posterior hippocampus, while future goals engage the anterior region.
2. Response Times: Goals to be reached immediately are recognized more quickly than distant ones.
3. Implications for Disorders: Insights may help understand and treat psychiatric disorders such as depression.

Source: University of Geneva

How does our brain distinguish between urgent and less urgent goals?

Researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the Icahn School of Medicine in New York have explored how our brain remembers and regulates the goals we set for ourselves on a daily basis.

Their study reveals differences in the way we process immediate and distant goals, both at the behavioral and cerebral levels.

These discoveries, described in the journal Nature Communicationsmay have important implications for understanding psychiatric disorders, particularly depression, which may impede the formulation of clear goals.

Throughout the day, we set ourselves goals to achieve: picking up the kids from school in one hour, making dinner in three hours, making a doctor’s appointment in five days, or mowing the lawn in one week. These goals, urgent and less urgent, are constantly redefined according to events that occur throughout the day.

Researchers from UNIGE and the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York have studied how the brain memorizes and updates goals to be achieved. More specifically, how the brain decides which goals require immediate attention and which do not.

Their study focused on a particular brain region, the hippocampus, because of its established role in episodic memory. This is responsible for encoding, consolidating and retrieving information with personal experience, integrating its emotional, spatial and temporal context.

An imaginary mission to Mars, at the time of an MRI scan

Neuroscientists asked 31 people to project themselves on a hypothetical 4-year space mission to Mars, asking them to achieve a series of objectives crucial to their survival (taking care of their space helmet, exercising, eating certain, etc.). The mission’s objectives varied according to when they were to be achieved, with different tasks for each of the four years of the journey.

As participants progressed through the mission, they were presented with the same objectives. They were then asked to indicate whether these were past, present or future goals.

As the participants moved forward in time, the importance of these goals changed: goals originally planned for the future became current needs, while current needs became goals of the past. In this way, the participants had to manage several targets at different distances in time and update their priorities as their mission progressed.

Priority of immediate objectives

The team observed each individual’s reaction time to determine whether the task had to be achieved in the present, past or future.

“Goals to be achieved immediately are recognized more quickly than those to be achieved in the distant future. This differential processing of stored information reveals the priority given to needs in the present over those in the distant future.

“It takes extra time to mentally travel back in time to regain past and future goals,” explains Alison Montagrin, researcher and lecturer in the Department of Basic Neurosciences at UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, former postdoctoral student at the Icahn School . of Medicine, and first author of the study.

The scientists also investigated whether the differences were also evident at the cerebral level. Images obtained using very high-resolution MRI revealed that, when receiving information about the present, the hippocampus is activated in its posterior region. On the other hand, when we remember past goals or goals to be achieved in the future, the frontal region is activated.

”These results are particularly interesting because previous studies have shown that when we call upon our episodic memory or our spatial memory, the anterior region of the hippocampus is involved in retrieving general information, while the posterior part deals with details.

“Therefore it will be interesting to explore whether – unlike immediate goals – future projection or recall of a past goal does not require specific details, but a general representation is sufficient”, concludes the researcher.

This research shows that the time scale plays a crucial role in how people set personal goals. This may have important implications for understanding psychiatric disorders such as depression.

Indeed, people suffering from depression may present difficulties in forming specific goals and foresee more obstacles in achieving their objectives. Investigating whether these people perceive distance from their goals differently—which may make them pessimistic about their chances of success—may open a therapeutic avenue.

About this neuroscience research news

Author: Antoine Guenot
Source: University of Geneva
Contact: Antoine Guenot – University of Geneva
Image: Image is credited to Neuroscience News

Original research: Open access.
“The hippocampus dissociates present from past and future goals” by Alison Montagrin et al. Nature Communications

ABSTRACT

The hippocampus separates present from past and future goals

Our brains skillfully navigate goals across time frames, distinguishing between immediate needs and those of the past or future.

The hippocampus is a region known for supporting mental time travel and organizing information along its longitudinal axis, moving from detailed posterior to generalized anterior representations.

This study investigates the role of the hippocampus in distinguishing goals over time: whether the hippocampus encodes time independently of details or abstractions, and whether the hippocampus preferentially activates its anterior region for temporally distant (past and future) goals. and its posterior region for immediate purposes. .

We use a spatially themed experiment with 7T functional MRI in 31 participants to examine how the hippocampus encodes the temporal distance of goals.

During a simulated mission to Mars, we find that the hippocampus tracks goals only by temporal proximity. We show that past and future goals activate the left anterior hippocampus, whereas current goals engage the left posterior hippocampus.

This suggests that the hippocampus maps goals using time stamps, expanding its long axis system to include the organization of temporal goals.