The neural correlates of ongoing conscious thought

Smallwood, Jonathan; Turnbull, Adam; Wang, Hao-Ting; Ho, Nerissa Siu Ping; Poerio, Giulia L.; Karapanagiotidis, Theodoros; Konu, Delali; Mckeown, Brontë; Zhang, Meichao; Murphy, Charlotte; Vatansever, Deniz; Bzdok, Danilo; Konishi, Mahiko; Leech, Robert; Seli, Paul; Schooler, Jonathan W.; Bernhardt, Boris C.; Margulies, Daniel S.; Jefferies, Elizabeth

doi:10.1016/j.isci.2021.102132

Cited by 73 publications

(87 citation statements)

References 106 publications

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“…Additionally, it has been shown that the DMN is sensitive to the level of vivid detail in experience during spontaneous cognition and task contexts ( Sormaz et al. 2018 ; Smallwood et al. 2021 ).…”

Section: Principle 4: Spontaneous Perception Relies On Associative Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spontaneous perception: a framework for task-free, self-paced perception

Baror

2021

Neuroscience of Consciousness

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Flipping through social media feeds, viewing exhibitions in a museum, or walking through the botanical gardens, people consistently choose to engage with and disengage from visual content. Yet, in most laboratory settings, the visual stimuli, their presentation duration, and the task at hand are all controlled by the researcher. Such settings largely overlook the spontaneous nature of human visual experience, in which perception takes place independently from specific task constraints and its time course is determined by the observer as a self-governing agent. Currently, much remains unknown about how spontaneous perceptual experiences unfold in the brain. Are all perceptual categories extracted during spontaneous perception? Does spontaneous perception inherently involve volition? Is spontaneous perception segmented into discrete episodes? How do different neural networks interact over time during spontaneous perception? These questions are imperative to understand our conscious visual experience in daily life. In this article we propose a framework for spontaneous perception. We first define spontaneous perception as a task-free and self-paced experience. We propose that spontaneous perception is guided by four organizing principles that grant it temporal and spatial structures. These principles include coarse-to-fine processing, continuity and segmentation, agency and volition, and associative processing. We provide key suggestions illustrating how these principles may interact with one another in guiding the multifaceted experience of spontaneous perception. We point to testable predictions derived from this framework, including (but not limited to) the roles of the default-mode network and slow cortical potentials in underlying spontaneous perception. We conclude by suggesting several outstanding questions for future research, extending the relevance of this framework to consciousness and spontaneous brain activity. In conclusion, the spontaneous perception framework proposed herein integrates components in human perception and cognition, which have been traditionally studied in isolation, and opens the door to understand how visual perception unfolds in its most natural context.

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Section: Principle 4: Spontaneous Perception Relies On Associative Processingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spontaneous perception: a framework for task-free, self-paced perception

Baror

2021

Neuroscience of Consciousness

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“…Dimension reduction techniques can then be applied to use covariation in the responses to different questions to identify "patterns of thought" (37,39). Previous studies have used MDES to identify common patterns of ongoing thought, varying in both form and content, often with distinct neural correlates (28,37,(39)(40)(41)(42)(43).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of social isolation and changes in work patterns on ongoing thought during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom

Mckeown

Poerio

Strawson

et al. 2021

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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The COVID-19 pandemic led to lockdowns in countries across the world, changing the lives of billions of people. The United Kingdom’s first national lockdown, for example, restricted people’s ability to socialize and work. The current study examined how changes to socializing and working during this lockdown impacted ongoing thought patterns in daily life. We compared the prevalence of thought patterns between two independent real-world, experience-sampling cohorts, collected before and during lockdown. In both samples, young (18 to 35 y) and older (55+ y) participants completed experience-sampling measures five times daily for 7 d. Dimension reduction was applied to these data to identify common “patterns of thought.” Linear mixed modeling compared the prevalence of each thought pattern 1) before and during lockdown, 2) in different age groups, and 3) across different social and activity contexts. During lockdown, when people were alone, social thinking was reduced, but on the rare occasions when social interactions were possible, we observed a greater increase in social thinking than prelockdown. Furthermore, lockdown was associated with a reduction in future-directed problem solving, but this thought pattern was reinstated when individuals engaged in work. Therefore, our study suggests that the lockdown led to significant changes in ongoing thought patterns in daily life and that these changes were associated with changes to our daily routine that occurred during lockdown.

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“…On the one hand, sensory/motor systems as well as unimodal association cortices are involved in operations related to perceiving and acting in the outside world. These systems are differentiated from transmodal systems that are less tied to a specific modality, and are increasingly engaged in abstract and self-generated cognition together with communication with the “internal milieu” 1–4 . These functional differences are reflected in well-established differences in the microstructure of sensory/motor and transmodal cortex.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Genetic and phylogenetic uncoupling of structure and function in human transmodal cortex

Valk

Xu²,

Paquola

et al. 2021

Preprint

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Brain structure scaffolds intrinsic function, supporting cognition and ultimately behavioral flexibility. However, it remains unclear how a static, genetically controlled architecture supports flexible cognition and behavior. Here, we synthesize genetic, phylogenetic and cognitive analyses to understand how the macroscale organization of structure-function coupling across the cortex can inform its role in cognition. In humans, structure-function coupling was highest in regions of unimodal cortex and lowest in transmodal cortex, a pattern that was mirrored by a reduced alignment with heritable connectivity profiles. Structure-function uncoupling in non-human primates had a similar spatial distribution, but we observed an increased coupling between structure and function in association regions in macaques relative to humans. Meta-analysis suggested regions with the least genetic control (low heritable correspondence and different across primates) are linked to social cognition and autobiographical memory. Our findings establish the genetic and evolutionary uncoupling of structure and function in different transmodal systems may support the emergence of complex, culturally embedded forms of cognition.

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The neural correlates of ongoing conscious thought

Cited by 73 publications

References 106 publications

Spontaneous perception: a framework for task-free, self-paced perception

Spontaneous perception: a framework for task-free, self-paced perception

The impact of social isolation and changes in work patterns on ongoing thought during the first COVID-19 lockdown in the United Kingdom

Genetic and phylogenetic uncoupling of structure and function in human transmodal cortex

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