Laboratory of Experimental Psychology, Suor Orsola Benincasa University, Naples, Italy“There is no such thing as predicting the future!” says Sally inWoody Allen’s You will meet a tall dark stranger. But people havego at it nevertheless. Sally’s mother, her husband and evenherselffantasizeaboutmeetingthestrangeroftheirdreams.“Ifyou can see into the future, how come you didn’t know I wasgonnajumpoutabuildingandlandontopofyou?”asksBoristoHelena (Whatever works, Woody Allen). Because “humans havetheubiquitouscapacitytoimagine,planfor,andshapethefuture(evenifwedofrequentlygetitwrong)”(Suddendorf,2006,p. 1006). And they do so for various reasons. Many dilemmas,more or less ordinary, can be approached by projecting oneselfforward in time and envisaging how different variations of theevent will turn out. Max uses a future picturesque homelysetting to persuade his friend to leave the vessel, where he hasalways lived:You’llintroducemetothemotherofyourchildrenandinviteme for a Sunday dinner. I’ll bring the dessert and a bottle ofwineandyou’lltellmethatIshouldn’thaveandyou’llshowme around your house shaped like a ship. Your wife will becooking a turkey and, while we’ll sit at the table, I’ll tell herthatsheisanexcellentcook.She’llsaythatyoutalkaboutmeall the time. (The legend of the 1900,GiuseppeTornatore)Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction begins with Pumpkin andHoney Bunny providing a “reasonably good script of going toa restaurant” (Atance and O’Neill, 2001, p. 536) and scrutinis-ing it, in the attempt to foresee probable hazards:[Restaurants] are not expecting to get robbed. [.] Same asbanks, these places are insured. Manager [.] he’s justtrying to get you out the door before you start plugging thediners. Waitresses? [.] no way they’re taking a bullet forthe register. Busboys, some wetback getting paid $1.50 anhour, really give a fuck you’re stealing from the owner?Customers sitting with food in their mouths. They don’tknowwhat’sgoingon.Oneminutethey’rehavingaDenveromelette. next minute, someone’s sticking a gun in theirface.Most people can mentally cast themselves in hypotheticalscenarios and imagine related complex details. “Imaginethere’s no countries/It isn’t hard to do.” (“Imagine”, JohnLennon). This ability, variously labelled as episodic futurethinking (Atance and O’Neill, 2001), prospection (Buckner andCarroll, 2007), proscopic chronesthesia (Tulving, 2002)ormental time travel (Suddendorf and Corballis, 2007), allowshumans to examine the possible reactions likely to be elicitedby the subcortical systems in certain contexts (Gilbert andWilson, 2007). Towards the end of Clint Eastwood’s Hereafter,George, who used to work as a psychic, has an appointmentwithMarie.Heissittingatacafe´,seesherarrivingandlookingfor him, but he hesitates for a while to stand up fromthe tableand reach her. He imagines Marie and himself very close,holding and kissing each other. This scene makes Georgesmile and persuades him to meet her.Recent neuroimaging studies have revealed the neuralregions that are engaged during the construction of possiblefuture events (for a review see Schacter et al., 2008). At oddswith what common sense would suggest (“past is fact andfutureisfiction”eSuddendorfandCorballis,2007,p.302),mostoftheareasassociatedwithfutureepisodicthoughtshavealsobeenreportedtobeactivewhenrememberingpastevents.Themost frequently observed among these regions are the medialprefrontal cortex, the lateral temporal cortex, the posteriorregionsofthemedialandlateralparietalcortexencompassingthe posterior cingulate and retrosplenial regions, and themedial temporal lobe including the hippocampus. The sameregions belong to the “default network”, a brain system thatparticipates in internally focused functions, involving also