{"id":192242,"date":"2024-07-03T08:22:23","date_gmt":"2024-07-03T13:22:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/whats-going-on-in-our-brains-when-we-plan-study-uncovers-how-mental-simulations-rely-on-stored-memories"},"modified":"2024-07-03T08:22:23","modified_gmt":"2024-07-03T13:22:23","slug":"whats-going-on-in-our-brains-when-we-plan-study-uncovers-how-mental-simulations-rely-on-stored-memories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2024\/07\/whats-going-on-in-our-brains-when-we-plan-study-uncovers-how-mental-simulations-rely-on-stored-memories","title":{"rendered":"What\u2019s going on in our Brains when we Plan? Study uncovers how Mental Simulations rely on Stored Memories"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/whats-going-on-in-our-brains-when-we-plan-study-uncovers-how-mental-simulations-rely-on-stored-memories.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>In pausing to think before making an important decision, we may imagine the potential outcomes of different choices we could make. While this \u201cmental simulation\u201d is central to how we plan and make decisions in everyday life, how the brain works to accomplish this is not well understood.<\/p>\n<p>An international team of scientists has now uncovered neural mechanisms used in planning. Its results, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, suggest that an interplay between the brain\u2019s prefrontal cortex and hippocampus allows us to imagine future outcomes in order to guide our decisions.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe prefrontal cortex acts as a \u2018simulator,\u2019 mentally testing out possible actions using a cognitive map stored in the hippocampus,\u201d explains Marcelo Mattar, an assistant professor in New York University\u2019s Department of Psychology and one of the paper\u2019s authors.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In pausing to think before making an important decision, we may imagine the potential outcomes of different choices we could make. While this \u201cmental simulation\u201d is central to how we plan and make decisions in everyday life, how the brain works to accomplish this is not well understood. An international team of scientists has now [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":707,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-192242","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192242","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/707"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=192242"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/192242\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=192242"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=192242"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=192242"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}