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, Liu, & Ryan, 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.

The extent to which autobiographical memories are experienced within a coherent spatial layout has been shown to correlate more strongly with qualities of vividness and reliving than either non-spatial content or temporal specificity (Rubin et al., 2019). Mental scene construction has been proposed to require the retrieval and successful integration of spatial and sensory information relevant to the autobiographical event or fictitious scenario (Summerfield et al., 2010). The neurocognitive processes purported to support scene construction overlap considerably with those that have been associated with the generation and maintenance of visuo-spatial mental images (Kosslyn, 1994; Mast & Kosslyn, 2002). For example, in the theory of autobiographical event memory proposed by Rubin and Umanath (2015), the spatial layout of retrieved autobiographical events (i.e. spatial details associated with the place where an event took place) implicates visual imagery during scene construction to a much greater extent than any related non-spatial content.

For this special issue of Cortex, we invite submissions that examine neurocognitive processes in mental scene construction from a cognitive neuroscience perspective. Potential topics of interest include autobiographical recall, episodic future simulation, mental imagery, and other relevant aspects of visuo-spatial cognition such as boundary extension and spatial navigation. Submissions can include studies with patients with cognitive impairments that are related to scene construction processes; for example, visual-memory deficit amnesia (Rubin & Greenberg, 1998) or developmental amnesia (Mullally et al., 2014). We especially encourage work that integrates converging evidence from multiple methods. Studies on clinical disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder or social anxiety can also be considered if they relate to scene construction processes (e.g. Ji et al., 2020; Marlatte et al., 2022).