Mind wandering refers to a shift of attention away from a task at hand to task-unrelated thoughts. Several groups have shown increased activation of the left medial temporal lobe (MTL) before and during spontaneous thoughts suggesting that the left MTL may play a crucial role in mind wandering. Due to its relevance for long-term memory, we further hypothesized that the left MTL is particularly involved in mind wandering towards the past. Accordingly, we predicted a reduced propensity to mind wander and less past-oriented mind wandering in patients with left MTL epilepsies. To this end, we experimentally investigated mind wandering in 89 in-patients undergoing diagnostic evaluation of their putative epileptic disorder. Patients performed a sustained attention to response task with embedded experience sampling probes aiming to assess occurrence, meta-awareness and temporal orientation (past/present/future) of mind-wandering episodes. We did not find significant differences in the propensity to mind wander between patient subgroups. However, the left MTL epilepsy subgroup showed significantly reduced past-oriented mind wandering compared to right MTL epilepsies, as well as a trend towards diminished past-oriented mind wandering compared to idiopathic epilepsies. Possibly due to compensatory mechanisms, the right MTL epilepsy subgroup showed significantly increased past-oriented mind wandering compared to extratemporal epilepsies and patients with syncopes. These behavioural findings point to a rejection of the hypothesis that the amount of time engaged in mind wandering crucially depends on the left MTL. However, our data do support the idea that the left MTL is particularly involved in mind wandering towards the past.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/ejn.14743 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
The fundamentals of eye tracking part 2: From research question to operationalization.
Behav Res Methods
January 2025
Experimental Psychology, Helmholtz Institute, Utrecht, The Netherlands.
In this article, we discuss operationalizations and examples of experimental design in eye-tracking research. First, we distinguish direct operationalization for entities like saccades, which are closely aligned with their original concepts, and indirect operationalization for concepts not directly measurable, such as attention or mind-wandering. The latter relies on selecting a measurable proxy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAlpha and Theta Oscillations Associated With Behavioral Phenotypes of Pain-Attention Interaction.
Brain Behav
January 2025
Division of Brain, Imaging and Behavior, Krembil Brain Institute, Krembil Research Institute, University Health Network, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
Purpose: Pain is inherently salient and so draws our attention in addition to impacting performance on attention-demanding tasks. Individual variability in pain-attention interactions can be assessed by two kinds of behavioral phenotypes that quantify how individuals prioritize pain versus attentional needs. The intrinsic attention to pain (IAP) measure quantifies the degree to which a person attends to pain (high-IAP) or mind-wanders away from pain (low-IAP).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOpening the black box: Think Aloud as a method to study the spontaneous stream of consciousness.
Conscious Cogn
January 2025
Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences, University of California Santa Barbara, CA, USA.
Asking participants to Think Aloud is a common method for studying conscious experience, but it remains unclear whether this approach alters thought qualities-such as meta-awareness, rate of topic shifts, or the content of thoughts in task-absent conditions. To investigate this, we conducted two studies comparing thinking aloud to thinking silently. In Study 1, 111 participants alternated between 15-minute intervals of verbalizing and silently reflecting on their stream of consciousness in a counterbalanced design.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe integration of meditation into higher education: a systematic literature review.
J Am Coll Health
January 2025
University of Central Florida, Orlando, Florida, USA.
Reviewed empirical studies involving meditation-related interventions for college and university students during the past decade. Based on inclusion criteria, 44 studies were selected for the review and categorized into three major areas: attention, academic performance, and mental health (stress/anxiety). Areas were systemically reviewed and synthesized.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDefault mode network functional connectivity as a transdiagnostic biomarker of cognitive function.
Biol Psychiatry Cogn Neurosci Neuroimaging
January 2025
Department of Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA; Brain and Cognitive Science at the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA; Department of Psychology, Northeastern University. Electronic address:
The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, goal-directed cognition, self-projection, and theory of mind. Over recent years, there has been a surge in examining its functional connectivity, particularly its relationship with frontoparietal networks (FPN) involved in top-down attention, executive function, and cognitive control. The fluidity in switching between these internal and external modes of processing-highlighted by anti-correlated functional connectivity-has been proposed as an indicator of cognitive health.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!