• University of Texas at San Antonio, Cleveland Clinic, & Kessler Foundation Study:
A study asked subjects to visualize contracting their elbow flexor muscles.
✅ Result: Internal (first-person) imagery group showed a 10.8% strength increase after 12 weeks.
📌 Conclusion: Mental rehearsal primes the body for a future physical state.

• Ohio University Wrist-Cast Study:
Volunteers with wrists in casts practiced mental imagery of flexing muscles.
✅ Result: After one month, their muscles were twice as strong as the control group.
📌 Conclusion: Visualization can maintain or even increase strength.

• Finger Strength Visualization Study:
Participants visualized lifting weights with a finger.
✅ Result: Measurable increase in strength in that finger.
📌 Conclusion: Mental imagery can cause physical changes as if the action occurred.

• Brain Region Stimulation through Focus:
Repetition of thought focusing on a body region stimulates its brain region.
✅ Result: Physical changes observed in brain’s sensory areas.
📌 Conclusion: Visualization can remap the brain in anticipation of future physical experiences.

• Subconscious Mind & Children’s Brain-Wave Research:
Research shows humans are fully in the subconscious mind at birth.
📌 Conclusion: Understanding subconscious programming helps rewire it through visualization for desired future outcomes.

📄 AI-Generated Future Self Studies
¹ Study: Future You: A Conversation with an AI-Generated Future Self
✅ Result: 344 participants experienced reduced anxiety, lower negative emotions, and increased future self-continuity.
📄 arXiv preprint 2405.12514v4

² Pre-Registered RCT with 188 Participants:
✅ Result: AI-system reduced anxiety and strengthened future-self connection.
📄 Published in IEEE Frontiers in Education 2024 & NeurIPS Creative AI 2024

🧩 Harvard University Studies on Future Selves
• Near-Future Hypothetical Selves
✅ Method: Participants imagined 2 future activities (e.g., in 2 hours).
📌 Conclusion: Thinking about multiple future selves enhances memory and self-relevance.

• Imagined Future Activities & Memory
✅ Method: Participants encoded information related to 2 future tasks.
📌 Conclusion: Two imagined futures may improve long-term memory performance.

• Distinct Future Selves & Memory Performance
✅ Method: Participants imagined 2 distinct future identities.
📌 Conclusion: Cognitive processing benefits from considering multiple distinct future selves.

• Markus & Nurius’s Framework of Possible Selves
✅ Concept: Possible selves are cognitive representations of hopes, fears, fantasies.
📌 Conclusion: These motivate present behavior toward future outcomes.

• Narrative Study on 10-Year Future Selves
✅ Method: Participants wrote about themselves 10 years in the future.
📌 Conclusion: Storytelling reveals future expectations, obstacles, and emotional tone.

• Positive Future Selves: Expectations vs Dreams
✅ Method: Participants wrote about realistic expectations vs hopeful dreams.
📌 Conclusion: Highlights how individuals assign meaning to their imagined futures.

• Longitudinal Study on Future College-Graduate Selves
✅ Method: Students created fictional future social media profiles.
📌 Conclusion: Vivid, connected future selves correlated with motivation and academic progress.

• Age-Related Changes in Future Simulation
✅ Method: Participants recalled past & imagined future events using cue words.
📌 Conclusion: Helps explore how we construct mental representations of future and past.