Brain Injuries, FocalNCT06823193
The Impact of Self-processing on Mental Time Travel
A study testing Mental Time Travel task and Lifeline task in people with Brain Injuries, Focal, run by Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpA at 1 site in Italy.
Trial summary
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. Read more about this study
- Who is it for?
- Ages 40 to 80 yearsHealthy volunteers can take part
- Conditions the study is for
- Brain Injuries, Focal
- What is being tested?
- Mental Time Travel task and Lifeline task
- Type of treatment
- Lifestyle or therapy programme
- Could I receive a placebo?
- No, everyone receives an active treatment
- How many people
- 66 participants
- Where
- 1 siteItaly
- Study dates
- 1 Dec 2024to 30 Jun 2027
- Phase
- Interventional
- Are there results?
- Not yet: the study is under way
Key requirements
Who can take part, as listed by the sponsor. Only the study team can confirm whether you are eligible, so take this list to your doctor.
- Ages 40 to 80 years
- All sexes
- Healthy volunteers accepted
- Adult, Older adult
Who may be able to join
- 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.
Who cannot join
- psychiatric disorders
- multiple brain lesions
Trial locations and contacts
1 site in 1 country. Contact the study team or a site near you to ask about taking part.
Italy1 site, 1 recruiting
- Recruiting
Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri
Castel Goffredo, Mantova, 46042
Giuliana Vezzadini, MD, 0376-7741, giuliana.vezzadini@icsmaugeri.it
Giulia Franco, Psy, 0376-7741, giulia.franco@icsmaugeri.it
About this study
Official title: 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.
Read the 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.
- Conditions
- Brain Injuries, Focal
- Being tested
- Mental Time Travel task, Age Estimation control task, Lifeline task
- Keywords
- Mental Time Travel, Projection, Self/other distinction
- Medical subject headings
- Brain Injuries
What participants receive
What participants receive. In a randomised study each person is assigned to one group by chance.
Mental Time Travel taskBehavioural
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.
Age Estimation control taskBehavioural
In this task participants will estimate the age of the faces adopted as stimuli.
Lifeline taskBehavioural
In this task participants will be instructed to associated each event with the age at which they believe it typically occurred.
| Study group | Role | What they receive |
|---|---|---|
| Healthy participants | Active comparator | All participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task. Receives: Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task; Behavioral: Age Estimation control task; Behavioral: Lifeline task |
| vmPFC patients | Experimental | All participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task. Receives: Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task; Behavioral: Age Estimation control task; Behavioral: Lifeline task |
| not-vmPFC patients | Active comparator | All participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task. Receives: Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task; Behavioral: Age Estimation control task; Behavioral: Lifeline task |
What is being measured
The primary outcome is the main question the study is designed to answer.
Likely Responses of events (Percentage)
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.
Measured: At baseline
Secondary outcomes (1)
Temporal estimation of cultural prototypical life event (years)
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.
Measured: At baseline
Timeline
From the start of the study to its completion; the mark is today. Estimated dates are the sponsor’s plan.
- First posted12 Feb 2025
- Study start1 Dec 2024
- Primary completion30 Dec 2026 (estimated)
- Study completion30 Jun 2027 (estimated)
Resources
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govThe registry entry this page is built from, with its full change history.
- Publications (10)Papers the sponsor has linked to this study.
- Other trials for Brain Injuries, FocalStudies of the same condition, open and under way.
- More trials run by Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpAThe sponsor's other registered studies.
- What the trial phases meanHow a treatment moves from first tests in people to approval.
More details
For doctors and researchers: how the study is designed, who runs it, and its registry IDs.
Study design
- Study type
- Interventional
- Phase
- Phase N/A
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Non-randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Model description
- Healthy Participants; vmPFC patients; not-vmPFC patients.
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Enrolment
- 66 participants (estimated)
Sponsor and investigators
- Lead sponsor
- Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpA
- Sponsor type
- University, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- Centro Studi e Ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive (Cesena)
- Responsible party
- Sponsor
- Investigators
- Giuliana Vezzadini, MD, Principal investigator, Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri
IDs, dates and publications
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT06823193
- Sponsor's protocol ID
- ICS Maugeri CE 2717
- Status last verified
- Nov 2026
- First submitted
- 27 Jan 2025
- Last updated
- 4 Nov 2026
- Results posted
- No
- Data monitoring committee
- No
- FDA-regulated drug
- No
- FDA-regulated device
- No
- Individual data sharing
- No
Publications
Hutchinson JB, Uncapher MR, Wagner AD. Posterior parietal cortex and episodic retrieval: convergent and divergent effects of attention and memory. Learn Mem. 2009 May 23;16(6):343-56. doi: 10.1101/lm.919109. Print 2009 Jun.
PubMed 19470649Bonato M, Saj A, Vuilleumier P. Hemispatial Neglect Shows That "Before" Is "Left". Neural Plast. 2016;2016:2716036. doi: 10.1155/2016/2716036. Epub 2016 May 29.
PubMed 27313902Lou HC, Luber B, Crupain M, Keenan JP, Nowak M, Kjaer TW, Sackeim HA, Lisanby SH. Parietal cortex and representation of the mental Self. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Apr 27;101(17):6827-32. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0400049101. Epub 2004 Apr 19.
PubMed 15096584De Brigard F, Nathan Spreng R, Mitchell JP, Schacter DL. Neural activity associated with self, other, and object-based counterfactual thinking. Neuroimage. 2015 Apr 1;109:12-26. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.12.075. Epub 2015 Jan 8.
PubMed 25579447D'Argembeau A, Jedidi H, Balteau E, Bahri M, Phillips C, Salmon E. Valuing one's self: medial prefrontal involvement in epistemic and emotive investments in self-views. Cereb Cortex. 2012 Mar;22(3):659-67. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr144. Epub 2011 Jun 16.
PubMed 21680845Schacter DL, Addis DR, Hassabis D, Martin VC, Spreng RN, Szpunar KK. The future of memory: remembering, imagining, and the brain. Neuron. 2012 Nov 21;76(4):677-94. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.11.001.
PubMed 23177955Kaller CP, Rahm B, Spreer J, Weiller C, Unterrainer JM. Dissociable contributions of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in planning. Cereb Cortex. 2011 Feb;21(2):307-17. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhq096. Epub 2010 Jun 3.
PubMed 20522540Ciaramelli E, Anelli F, Frassinetti F. An asymmetry in past and future mental time travel following vmPFC damage. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2021 Mar 5;16(3):315-325. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa163.
PubMed 33382070D'Argembeau A, Van der Linden M. Phenomenal characteristics associated with projecting oneself back into the past and forward into the future: influence of valence and temporal distance. Conscious Cogn. 2004 Dec;13(4):844-58. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2004.07.007.
PubMed 15522635D'Angelo M, Frassinetti F, Cappelletti M. The Role of Beta Oscillations in Mental Time Travel. Psychol Sci. 2023 Apr;34(4):490-500. doi: 10.1177/09567976221147259. Epub 2023 Feb 16.
PubMed 37067986
Study at a glance
From the registry record, last updated by the sponsor on 4 Nov 2026. Recruitment status is as the sponsor reported it: confirm with the study team.
- Official title
- How Self-processing Affects Mental Time Travel: a Neuropsychological Study
- ClinicalTrials.gov ID
- NCT06823193
- Acronym / sponsor ID
- ICS Maugeri CE 2717
- Conditions
- Brain Injuries, Focal
- Keywords
- Mental Time Travel, Projection, Self/other distinction
- Study type
- Interventional
- Recruitment status
- Recruiting
- Enrolment
- 66 participants (estimated)
- Lead sponsor
- Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpAUniversity, hospital or other
- Collaborators
- Centro Studi e Ricerche in Neuroscienze Cognitive (Cesena)
- Study start
- 1 Dec 2024 (actual)
- Primary completion
- 30 Dec 2026 (estimated)
- Study completion
- 30 Jun 2027 (estimated)
- First posted
- 12 Feb 2025 (actual)
- Results
- Not posted in the source record
Clinical summary
The research question as the sponsor registered it. This describes what the study plans to test, not what it found.
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.
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 design
- Primary purpose
- Basic science
- Allocation
- Non-randomised
- Intervention model
- Parallel groups
- Masking
- None (open label)
- Number of arms
- 3
- Model description
- Healthy Participants; vmPFC patients; not-vmPFC patients.
| Arm | Type | Receives |
|---|---|---|
| Healthy participants | Active comparator | Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task, Behavioral: Age Estimation control task, Behavioral: Lifeline taskAll participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task. |
| vmPFC patients | Experimental | Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task, Behavioral: Age Estimation control task, Behavioral: Lifeline taskAll participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task. |
| not-vmPFC patients | Active comparator | Behavioral: Mental Time Travel task, Behavioral: Age Estimation control task, Behavioral: Lifeline taskAll participants performed the MTT task, the Age estimation task and the Lifeline task. |
Who may qualify
- Ages
- 40 to 80 years
- Sex
- All
- Healthy volunteers
- Accepted
- Age groups
- Adult, Older adult
Key inclusion criteria (2 listed)
- 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.
Key exclusion criteria (2 listed)
- psychiatric disorders
- multiple brain lesions
Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening; this overview does not establish that a patient qualifies. Full inclusion and exclusion criteria.
Interventions
| Intervention | Type | Arms |
|---|---|---|
| Mental Time Travel taskA 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. | Behavioural | Healthy participants, not-vmPFC patients, vmPFC patients |
| Age Estimation control taskIn this task participants will estimate the age of the faces adopted as stimuli. | Behavioural | Healthy participants, not-vmPFC patients, vmPFC patients |
| Lifeline taskIn this task participants will be instructed to associated each event with the age at which they believe it typically occurred. | Behavioural | Healthy participants, not-vmPFC patients, vmPFC patients |
Primary outcome
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.
1 secondary outcome
Temporal estimation of cultural prototypical life event (years)
Time frame: At baseline
Results and safety
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
Research links
- Official record on ClinicalTrials.govLast updated by the sponsor 4 Nov 2026.
- Background: PubMed 19470649Hutchinson JB, Uncapher MR, Wagner AD. Posterior parietal cortex and episodic retrieval: convergent and divergent effects of attention and memory. Learn Mem. 2009 May 23;16(6):343-56. doi: 10.1101/lm.919109. Print 2009 Jun.
- Background: PubMed 27313902Bonato M, Saj A, Vuilleumier P. Hemispatial Neglect Shows That "Before" Is "Left". Neural Plast. 2016;2016:2716036. doi: 10.1155/2016/2716036. Epub 2016 May 29.
- Background: PubMed 15096584Lou HC, Luber B, Crupain M, Keenan JP, Nowak M, Kjaer TW, Sackeim HA, Lisanby SH. Parietal cortex and representation of the mental Self. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2004 Apr 27;101(17):6827-32. doi: 10.1073/pnas.0400049101. Epub 2004 Apr 19.
- Background: PubMed 25579447De Brigard F, Nathan Spreng R, Mitchell JP, Schacter DL. Neural activity associated with self, other, and object-based counterfactual thinking. Neuroimage. 2015 Apr 1;109:12-26. doi: 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2014.12.075. Epub 2015 Jan 8.
- Background: PubMed 21680845D'Argembeau A, Jedidi H, Balteau E, Bahri M, Phillips C, Salmon E. Valuing one's self: medial prefrontal involvement in epistemic and emotive investments in self-views. Cereb Cortex. 2012 Mar;22(3):659-67. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhr144. Epub 2011 Jun 16.
- Background: PubMed 23177955Schacter DL, Addis DR, Hassabis D, Martin VC, Spreng RN, Szpunar KK. The future of memory: remembering, imagining, and the brain. Neuron. 2012 Nov 21;76(4):677-94. doi: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.11.001.
- Background: PubMed 20522540Kaller CP, Rahm B, Spreer J, Weiller C, Unterrainer JM. Dissociable contributions of left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in planning. Cereb Cortex. 2011 Feb;21(2):307-17. doi: 10.1093/cercor/bhq096. Epub 2010 Jun 3.
- Background: PubMed 33382070Ciaramelli E, Anelli F, Frassinetti F. An asymmetry in past and future mental time travel following vmPFC damage. Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. 2021 Mar 5;16(3):315-325. doi: 10.1093/scan/nsaa163.
- Background: PubMed 15522635D'Argembeau A, Van der Linden M. Phenomenal characteristics associated with projecting oneself back into the past and forward into the future: influence of valence and temporal distance. Conscious Cogn. 2004 Dec;13(4):844-58. doi: 10.1016/j.concog.2004.07.007.
- Background: PubMed 37067986D'Angelo M, Frassinetti F, Cappelletti M. The Role of Beta Oscillations in Mental Time Travel. Psychol Sci. 2023 Apr;34(4):490-500. doi: 10.1177/09567976221147259. Epub 2023 Feb 16.
- Individual participant dataSharing planned: No
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Referral and contact
AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals. Contact the study team or a site listed below; they decide who can take part.
Giuliana Vezzadini, MD principal investigator
Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri
1 site in 1 country: see every site and its status.
Questions about this trial
What is this clinical trial studying?
A study testing Mental Time Travel task and Lifeline task in people with Brain Injuries, Focal, run by Istituti Clinici Scientifici Maugeri SpA at 1 site in Italy.
The full registered description is in the About this study section and the official record.
Who may be eligible to take part?
The sponsor lists 2 inclusion and 2 exclusion criteria. Eligibility is decided by the study team after screening, so read the full criteria and contact a listed site.
Is this clinical trial currently recruiting?
The record says: looking for participants now, as of the sponsor's last update on 4 Nov 2026. Status can change between updates, so confirm with the study contact before making plans.
Where is the study taking place?
The record lists 1 site in Italy. Whether a site is taking part right now should be confirmed with that site. See every site.
What are the possible benefits and risks?
They depend on the study and the treatment, and no study can promise a benefit. The study team explains the known risks during informed consent, before anyone joins; the record itself does not list them.
Are results available for this study?
This study is still under way. Results are not available in the source record yet.
How can a doctor refer a patient or contact the research team?
Contact Giuliana Vezzadini, MD (0376-7741, giuliana.vezzadini@icsmaugeri.it), or a site near the patient. AzTrials does not enrol participants or take referrals.
What does the primary outcome measure?
Likely Responses of events (Percentage) (time frame: At baseline). It is what the study was designed to measure, not a finding.
Where can I read the original study information?
On the ClinicalTrials.gov record for NCT06823193, which also lists 10 linked publications.
Does a listing mean the treatment is approved or proven to work?
No. A listing means the study is registered. It does not show that the treatment is safe, works, or is approved by a regulator.
How often is this information updated?
AzTrials copies changed records from ClinicalTrials.gov every night and reloads the whole registry every week. The sponsor last updated this record on 4 Nov 2026.