In recent decades, the importance of future oriented processing across different cognitive domains and timescales has been recognized. The underlying neural mechanisms of these processes have been explored, resulting in findings that have associated predictive processing with the functioning of different brain regions and neural systems. However, although individual incarnations of future oriented processing within cognitive domains have been
meticulously investigated and described, a unified approach that would summarize and compare such processes across domains is still lacking. The present review succinctly describes future oriented cognitive processes across different psychological domains and discusses their underlying neural mechanisms. In doing so, it examines the manifestations and beneficial aspects of future orientation in perception, motor behavior, attention, and higher order
cognition as well as in emotional and motivational processing. In addition, the importance of future orientation for self-referential processing is evaluated and novel insights are offered into some of the critical questions that remain to be elucidated in future research within this field
