A study published in 2021 in the journal Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) explores how one particular brain region helps to knit together memories of the present and future self. When people sustain an injury to this area, it leads to an impaired sense of identity. The region—called the ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)—may produce a fundamental model of oneself and place it in mental time. When the re­­gion does so, this study suggests, it may be the source of our sense of self.