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been made for a functional account (see Box 1). Various aspects of human cognitive functioning seem to derive increased efficiency from knowledge of past episodes. In these functional accounts episodic memory and counter-factual imagination are two aspects of the same capacity to engage in off-line inferences as an aid to present decision making, for instance, by maintaining a store of exemplars against which to compare present situations and select the most beneficial course of action [4,9]. This would suggest that MTT is a recent adaptation whose emergence is con-nected with the sudden increase in behavioral variety and represented actually occurred [16]. Neuroimaging confirms that the recollection of specific situations triggers not just limbic activity but also the recreation of specific internal or visceral states associated with the original situation [17]. The emotional component of recollection is not a controlled process, and it often clashes with current goals. This is true of positive memories but even more of negative ones [18]. These features all apply to forecasting and imagination as well. That forecasting and recall are part of the same function is an evolutionary hypothesis [4], now supported by both behavioral evidence [19] and neuroimaging, show-ing that imagining future circumstances modulates acti-vation of the same cortical networks as remembering past episodes [20,21]. Both future and past imagery of one’s own experience are neurally distinct from imagining anotherCorresponding author: Boyer, P