Episodic foresight and stroke

Objective: Stroke is often associated with increased difficulty engaging in specific future-directed thoughts and behaviors, such as generating phenomenological characteristics of future events (a component of episodic foresight) and executing directed preparatory behaviors (a component of prospective memory). The objective of this study was to clarify whether this group also exhibits increased difficulties using episodic foresight to appropriately guide future-directed behaviors. Method: Stroke patients (n = 26) and demographically matched healthy controls (n = 26) were administered a behavioral measure that met strict criteria for assessing episodic foresight. In keeping with our focus on the functional application of foresight, this measure required participants to identify a problem, self-generate a resolution, and execute the appropriate future-directed intention. Results: Relative to controls, individuals who had suffered a stroke were less likely to acquire items that would later allow a problem to be solved and were also less likely to subsequently use these items to solve the problems. There were no group or task differences between left- and right-hemisphere-stroke subgroups. There were also no significant associations between our measure of episodic foresight with other cognitive measures or a measure of daily function. Conclusions: These data indicate that the capacity to apply episodic foresight in an adaptive way can be disrupted after stroke. Future work is now needed to more fully delineate the implications of difficulties engaging episodic foresight in everyday life as well as how these difficulties might be remediated.