2025-07-22 神戸大学
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<関連情報>
- https://www.kobe-u.ac.jp/ja/news/article/20250722-66828/
- https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2511101122
楽観的な人は皆似ている: 楽観的な人のエピソード的未来思考を支える神経表象の共有 Optimistic people are all alike: Shared neural representations supporting episodic future thinking among optimistic individuals
Kuniaki Yanagisawa, Ryusuke Nakai, Kohei Asano, +2 , and Nobuhito Abe
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Published:July 21, 2025
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2511101122
Significance
Optimism, defined as maintaining positive expectations for the future, is a crucial psychological resource correlated with enhanced well-being and physical health. Recent research suggests that neural processing of cognitive function is similar among individuals with positive traits but more dissimilar among those with negative traits. Applying the cross-subject neural representational analytical approach, we found that optimistic individuals display similar neural processing when imagining the future, whereas less optimistic individuals show idiosyncratic differences. Additionally, we found that optimistic individuals imagined positive events as more distinct from negative events than less optimistic individuals. These results have both theoretical and methodological implications for our understanding of the adaptive nature of optimism.
Abstract
Optimism is a critical personality trait that influences future-oriented cognition by emphasizing positive future outcomes and deemphasizing negative outcomes. How does the brain represent idiosyncratic differences in episodic future thinking that are modulated by optimism? In two functional MRI (fMRI) studies, participants were scanned during an episodic future thinking task in which they were presented with a series of episodic scenarios with different emotional valence and prompted to imagine themself (or their partner) in the situation. Intersubject representational similarity analysis revealed that more optimistic individuals had similar neural representations in the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), while less optimistic individuals exhibited more idiosyncratic neural representations in the MPFC. Additionally, individual difference multidimensional scaling of MPFC activity revealed that the referential target and emotional valence of imagined events were clearly mapped onto different dimensions. Notably, the weights along the emotional dimension were closely linked to the optimism scores of participants, suggesting that optimistic individuals imagine positive events as more distinct from negative events. These results suggest that shared neural processing of the MPFC among optimistic individuals supports episodic future thinking that facilitates psychological differentiation between positive and negative future events.
