Mental scene construction is an important topic that brings together contemporary research in autobiographical memory, mental imagery, episodic simulation, and applied aspects of visuo-spatial cognition such as spatial navigation. In this context, it refers to the neurocognitive processes involved in mentally generating and maintaining complex and coherent scenes or events (Hassabis & Maguire, 2007, 2009; Ladyka-Wojcik et al., 2022; Maguire & Mullally, 2013). Mental scene construction has been implicated during the recall of autobiographical memories (Bernardis et al., 2025; El Haj, 2024) and the imagining of fictitious or future events (Palombo et al.,
2018; Schacter et al., 2012). Maguire and Mullally (2013) proposed that the mental construction of spatially coherent scenes is central to hippocampal information processing. Patients with bilateral hippocampal lesions show significant impairment in both autobiographical recall and imagined future thinking (Mullally et al., 2012; Race et al., 2011). Rubin (2020) has argued that this ability to mentally construct scenes is a stable individual difference that is predictive of phenomenological qualities of autobiographical recall such as its vividness, reliving, and emotional intensity.
