Similar future projections depicted by optimistic people's brains — Shared information processing visualized with fMRI by Kobe University

A research group led by Associate Professor Kuniaki Yanagisawa from the Graduate School of Humanities at Kobe University and Professor Nobuhito Abe and Program-Specific Associate Professor Ryusuke Nakai from the Institute for the Future of Human Society at Kyoto University announced that they have revealed that optimistic people perform similar information processing when imagining the future. The medial prefrontal cortex of optimistic people shows brain activity patterns (neural representations) that exhibit a common cognitive structure when imagining the future, but pessimistic people lack commonality in this structure, with each individual showing unique patterns. Since optimistic people tend to build richer human relationships, this research is expected to contribute to understanding social issues such as social isolation and loneliness. The results were published in the July 21 week issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

It has been reported that more optimistic people tend to build richer human relationships and are less likely to experience social isolation and loneliness. However, the mechanisms behind this have not been clarified.

During this study, the research group verified the possibility that cognitive structures, particularly when imagining the future, are more similar among optimistic people. Specifically, they conducted two studies using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) on a total of 87 subjects (Study 1: 30 people, Study 2: 57 people).

They measured brain activity while participants specifically imagined various future events with different emotional valence (the nature of emotions toward a stimulus or event expressed on an axis from positive to negative) happening to themselves or their spouses. Specific examples included "staying at a resort hotel (positive)" and "taking on large debts (negative)."

After the fMRI experiment, participants completed a questionnaire with psychological scales measuring optimism, and their degree of optimism was evaluated based on these scores. Study 2 examined the reproducibility of Study 1 and conducted similar experiments. Next, using the brain activity data obtained, the group examined the similarity of brain activity patterns between individuals and cognitive structures based on brain activity patterns, focusing on the medial prefrontal cortex.

The results of the analysis indicated that optimistic people showed similar structures in neural representations (brain activity patterns that show how events and concepts are represented in the brain) in the medial prefrontal cortex when imagining the future, while pessimistic people showed unique structures.

It was revealed that people with higher optimism place stronger emphasis on dimensions that distinguish between the "positiveness" and "negativeness" of future events. This means that optimistic people more clearly distinguish between good and bad futures in their brains.

This showed the possibility that optimistic people tend to imagine similar futures, which may lead to building rich human relationships and reducing social isolation and loneliness.

Yanagisawa commented: "Everyone lives in different subjective worlds. Within this context, we have discovered the possibility that a 'shared reality' about the future exists in the brains of optimistic people. This discovery provides a new perspective on the question of how people can connect emotionally and live together. I believe that by exploring how this shared reality emerges in our future research, we can contribute to understanding loneliness and creating a society filled with empathy."

Journal Information
Publication: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Title: Optimistic people are all alike: Shared neural representations supporting episodic future thinking among optimistic individuals
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2511101122