The Origins of a Spontaneous Thought: EEG Correlates and Thinkers’ Source Attributions

Christine A. Godwin; Ezequiel Morsella; Mark W. Geisler; Christine A. Godwin; Ezequiel Morsella; Mark W. Geisler

doi:10.3934/Neuroscience.2016.2.203

AIMS Neuroscience

2016, Volume 3, Issue 2: 203-231. doi: 10.3934/Neuroscience.2016.2.203

Previous Article Next Article

Research article Topical Sections

The Origins of a Spontaneous Thought: EEG Correlates and Thinkers’ Source Attributions

1.
School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA 30332;
2.
Department of Psychology, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA;
3.
Department of Neurology, University of California, San Francisco, CA.

Received: 16 May 2016 Accepted: 30 May 2016 Published: 13 June 2016

Spontaneous thoughts can arise from past memories, future tasks, and environmental cues. We developed a paradigm to investigate the stream of consciousness leading to spontaneous thoughts. While performing a concentration exercise (9 min) requiring one to focus only on one’s breathing, subjects observed spontaneous thoughts and counted the number of cognitions/percepts (‘links’) that they believed led to each spontaneous thought. In Studies 1–3, subjects reported less than 2 links per thought, over 80% of thoughts were attributed to a known cause, and roughly half of the thoughts were attributed to something outside the current environment. In Study 4, we examined the neural correlates of spontaneous thoughts triggered by external stimuli or internal, stimulus-independent factors (e.g., memories). Continuous EEG was recorded from seven active electrode sites (Fz, Cz, Pz, F3, F4, P3, and P4) as subjects indicated experiencing a thought. Subjects indicated whether their thoughts arose from internal (e.g., memories) or external (sights, sounds, smells, and bodily sensations) factors. To examine the neural correlates of each individually-reported thought, EEG was examined in short time scales (< 1 s) preceding each button press. Increased alpha correlation was observed for internal thoughts compared to a baseline condition (eyes-opened resting). In addition, increased alpha correlation in the parietal region was observed for internal compared to external thoughts. These findings are in line with previous research implicating distinct brain networks for internal and external awareness. We discuss the implications and potential future applications of this new approach for investigating the stream of consciousness.
- spontaneous thought,
- task unrelated thought,
- mind wandering,
- stream of consciousness,
- consciousness
Citation: Christine A. Godwin, Ezequiel Morsella, Mark W. Geisler. The Origins of a Spontaneous Thought: EEG Correlates and Thinkers’ Source Attributions[J]. AIMS Neuroscience, 2016, 3(2): 203-231. doi: 10.3934/Neuroscience.2016.2.203

Related Papers:

Abstract

Spontaneous thoughts can arise from past memories, future tasks, and environmental cues. We developed a paradigm to investigate the stream of consciousness leading to spontaneous thoughts. While performing a concentration exercise (9 min) requiring one to focus only on one’s breathing, subjects observed spontaneous thoughts and counted the number of cognitions/percepts (‘links’) that they believed led to each spontaneous thought. In Studies 1–3, subjects reported less than 2 links per thought, over 80% of thoughts were attributed to a known cause, and roughly half of the thoughts were attributed to something outside the current environment. In Study 4, we examined the neural correlates of spontaneous thoughts triggered by external stimuli or internal, stimulus-independent factors (e.g., memories). Continuous EEG was recorded from seven active electrode sites (Fz, Cz, Pz, F3, F4, P3, and P4) as subjects indicated experiencing a thought. Subjects indicated whether their thoughts arose from internal (e.g., memories) or external (sights, sounds, smells, and bodily sensations) factors. To examine the neural correlates of each individually-reported thought, EEG was examined in short time scales (< 1 s) preceding each button press. Increased alpha correlation was observed for internal thoughts compared to a baseline condition (eyes-opened resting). In addition, increased alpha correlation in the parietal region was observed for internal compared to external thoughts. These findings are in line with previous research implicating distinct brain networks for internal and external awareness. We discuss the implications and potential future applications of this new approach for investigating the stream of consciousness.

References

[1]	Freud S (1901/1914) The psychopathology of everyday life. (Brill AA, Trans.). London: T. Fisher Unwin; 1914.
[2]	Fancher RE (1973) Psychoanalytic psychology: The development of Freud's thought. NewYork: WW Norton; 1973.
[3]	Haynes J, Rees G (2006) Decoding mental states from brain activity in humans. Neuroimaging 7: 523-534.
[4]	Libet B (2004) Mind time: The temporal factor in consciousness. Cambridge, MA: Harvard; 2004.
[5]	Morsella E, Ben-Zeev A, Lanska M, et al. (2010) The spontaneous thoughts of the night: How future tasks breed intrusive cognitions. Soc Cognition 28: 640-649.
[6]	Smallwood J, Nind L, O’Connor RC (2009) When is your head at? An exploration of the factors associated with the temporal focus of the wandering mind. Conscious Cognition 18: 118-125.
[7]	Nolen-Hoeksema S (2001) Gender differences in depression. Curr Direct Depress 10: 173-176. doi: 10.1111/1467-8721.00142
[8]	Klinger E, Barta SG, Maxeiner ME (1980) Motivational correlates of thought content frequency and commitment. J Person Soc Psychol 39: 1222-1237. doi: 10.1037/h0077724
[9]	Nolen-Hoeksema S (1996) Chewing the cud and other ruminations. The automaticity of everyday life. In Wyer RS, editor. Advances in social cognition. Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum; 1996.
[10]	Smallwood J, Fitzgerald A, Miles LK, et al. (2009) Shifting moods, wandering minds: Negative moods lead the mind to wander. Emotion 9: 271-276
[11]	Berntsen D (1996) Involuntary autobiographical memories. Appl Cognit Psychol 10: 435-454.
[12]	Schank RC (1982) Dynamic memory: A theory of reminding and learning in computers and people. London: Cambridge University Press; 1982.
[13]	Bargh JA, Morsella E (2008) The unconscious mind. Perspect Psychol Sci 3: 73-79. doi: 10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00064.x
[14]	Franklin S, Baars BJ (2010) Spontaneous remembering is the norm: What integrative models tell us about human consciousness. In Mace JH, editor. The act of remembering. Oxford: Blackwell; 2010.
[15]	Morsella E, Godwin CA, Jantz TJ, et al. (in press) Homing in on consciousness in the nervous system: An action-based synthesis [Target Article]. Behavior Brain Sci.
[16]	Helmholtz Hv (1856/1925) Treatise of physiological optics: Concerning the perceptions in general. In Shipley T, editor. Classics in psychology. New York: Philosophy Library; (1856/1925). pp. 79-127.
[17]	Antrobus JS, Singer JL, Greenberg S (1966) Studies in the stream of consciousness: Experimental enhancement and suppression of spontaneous cognitive processes. Perceptual Motor Skill 23: 399-417.
[18]	Klinger E (1978) Modes of normal conscious flow. In Pope KS, Singer JL, editors. The stream of consciousness: Scientific investigations into the flow of human experience. New York: Plenum; (1978). pp. 225-258.
[19]	Christoff K (2012) Undirected thought: Neural determinants and correlates. Brain Res 1428: 51-59.
[20]	Klinger E, Cox WM (1987/1988) Dimensions of thought flow in everyday life. Imagination, Cognition and Personality 7: 105-128.
[21]	Giambra LM, Grodsky A (1989) Task-unrelated images and thoughts while reading. In Shorr JE, Robin P, Connella JA, Wolpin M, editors. Imagery: Current perspectives. New York, NY, US: Plenum; (1989). pp. 27-31.
[22]	Giambra LM (1995) A laboratory method for investigating influences on switching attention to task-unrelated imagery and thought. Conscious Cognit 4: 1-21.
[23]	Grodsky A, Giambra LM (1990) The consistency across vigilance and reading tasks of individual differences in the occurrence of task-unrelated and task-related images and thoughts. Imagine Cognit Person10: 39-52.
[24]	Clapp WC, Gazzaley A (2012) Distinct mechanisms for the impact of distraction and interruption on working memory in aging. Neurobio Aging 33: 134-148. doi: 10.1016/j.neurobiolaging.2010.01.012
[25]	Smallwood J, Schooler JW (2006) The restless mind. Psychol Bulletin 132: 946. doi: 10.1037/0033-2909.132.6.946
[26]	Soon CS, Brass M, Heinze H-J, et al. (2008) Unconscious determinants of free decisions in the human brain. Nat Neurosci 11: 543-545.
[27]	Förster J, Liberman N (2001) The role of attribution of motivation in producing postsuppresional rebound. J Person Soci Psychol 81: 377-390.
[28]	Block N (2007) Consciousness, accessibility, and the mesh between psychology and neuroscience. Behavior Brain Sci 30: 481-548.
[29]	Morsella E, Wilson LE, Berger CC, et al. (2009) Subjective aspects of cognitive control at different stages of processing. Attention Percept Psychophysics 71: 1807-1824.
[30]	James W (1890/1918) The principles of psychology, volume 1. New York: Dover Publishers; 1890/1918.
[31]	Wolford G, Miller MB, Gazzaniga M (2000) The left hemisphere’s role in hypothesis formation. J Neurosci 20: 1-4.
[32]	Cohen AR, Stotland E, Wolfe DM (1955) An experimental investigation of need for cognition. J Abnormal Soc Psychol 51: 291. doi: 10.1037/h0042761
[33]	Cowan N (2010) The magical mystery four: How is working memory capacity limited, and why? Current Direct Psychol Sci 19: 51-57.
[34]	Di Lollo V, Enns JT, Rensink RA (2000) Competition for consciousness among visual events: The psychophysics of reentrant visual pathways. J Experiment Psychol 129: 481-507.
[35]	Holt EB (1914) The concept of consciousness. New York: Macmillan; 1914.
[36]	Miller GA (1956) The magical number seven, plus or minus two: Some limits on our capacity for processing information. Psychol Rev 63: 81-97.
[37]	Kaufman EL, Lord MW, Reese TW, et al. (1949) The discrimination of visual number. Am J Psychol 62: 498-525.
[38]	Raz A, Lifshitz M (2016) Hypnosis and meditation: Towards an integrative science of conscious planes. New York, NY: Oxford University Press; 2016.
[39]	Berntsen D (1998) Voluntary and involuntary access to autobiographical memory. Memory 6: 113-141.
[40]	Mason MF, Norton MI, Van Horn JD, et al. (2007) Wandering minds: The default network and stimulus-independent thought. Science 315: 393-395.
[41]	McVay JC, Kane MJ (2010) Does mind wandering reflect executive function or executive failure? Comment on Smallwood and Schooler (2006) and Watkins (2008). Psychol Bulletin 136: 188-197.
[42]	Mitchell JP, Heatherton TF, Kelley WM et al. (2007) Separating sustained from transient aspects of cognitive control during thought suppression. Psychol Sci 18: 292-297.
[43]	Wyland CL, Kelley WM, Macrae CN, et al. (2003) Neural correlates of thought suppression. Neuropsychologia 41: 1863-1867.
[44]	Kabat-Zinn J (2005) Guided mindfulness meditation (audiobook). Colorado: Sounds True; 2005.
[45]	Aarts H, Dijksterhuis A (2000) Habits as knowledge structures: Automaticity in goal-directed behavior. J Person Soc Psychol 78: 53-63. doi: 10.1037/0022-3514.78.1.53
[46]	Levine LR, Morsella E, Bargh JA (2007) The perversity of inanimate objects: Stimulus control by incidental musical notation. Soc Cognit 25: 265-280.
[47]	Skinner BF (1953) Science and human behavior. New York: Macmillan; 1953.
[48]	Wood W, Quinn J, Kashy D (2002) Habits in everyday life: Thought, emotion, and action. J Person Soc Psychol 83: 1281-1297.
[49]	Vanhaudenhuyse A, Demertzi A, Schabus M, et al. (2011) Two distinct neuronal networks mediate the awareness of environment and of self. J Cognit Neurosci 23: 570-578.
[50]	Andrews-Hanna JR (2012) The brain’s default network and its adaptive role in internal mentation. Neuroscientist 18: 251-270.
[51]	Gruberger M, Ben-Simon E, Levkovitz, Y, et al. (2011) Towards a neuroscience of mind-wandering. Front Human Neurosci 5: 1-11.
[52]	Raichle ME, MacLeod AM, Snyder AZ, et al. (2001) A default mode of brain function. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 98: 676-682.
[53]	Christoff K, Gordon AM, Smallwood J, et al. (2009) Experience sampling during fMRI reveals default network and executive system contributions to mind wandering. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 106: 8719-8724.
[54]	Smallwood J, Brown K, Baird B (2012) Cooperation between the default mode network and the frontal-parietal network in the production of an internal train of thought. Brain Res 1428: 60-70.
[55]	Smallwood J, Beach E, Schooler JW, et al. (2008) Going AWOL in the brain: Mind wandering reduces cortical analysis of external events. J Cognit Neurosci 20: 458-469.
[56]	Knyazev GG, Savostyanov AN, Volf NV, et al. (2012) EEG correlates of spontaneous self-referential thoughts: A cross-cultural study. Int J Psychophysiol 86: 173-181. doi: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2012.09.002
[57]	Braboszcz C, Delorme A (2011) Lost in thoughts: Neural markers of low alertness during mind wandering. NeuroImage 54: 3040-3047.
[58]	Cunningham S, Scerbo MW, Freeman FG (2000) The electrocortical correlates of daydreaming during vigilance tasks. J Mental Imagery 24: 61-72.
[59]	Lehmann D, Strik WK, Henggeler B, et al. (1998) Brain electric microstates and momentary conscious mind states as building blocks of spontaneous thinking: I. Visual imagery and abstract thoughts. Int J Psychophysiol 29: 1-11.
[60]	Mason MF, Norton MI, Van Horn JD, et al. (2007) Response to comment on “Wandering minds: The default network and stimulus-independent thought.” Science 317: 43c.
[61]	Chun MM, Golomb JD, Turk-Browne NB (2011) A taxonomy of external and internal attention. Ann Rev Psychol 62: 73-101.
[62]	Cooper NR, Croft RJ, Dominey SJJ, et al. (2003) Paradox lost? Exploring the role of alpha oscillations during externally vs. internally directed attention and the implications for idling and inhibition hypotheses. Int J Psychophysiol 47: 65-74.
[63]	Sauseng P, Klimesch W, Schabus M, et al. (2005) Fronto-parietal EEG coherence in theta and upper alpha reflect central executive functions of working memory. Int J Psychophysiol 57: 97-103.
[64]	Mathewson KE, Lleras A, Beck DM, et al. (2011) Pulsed out of awareness: EEG alpha oscillations represent a pulsed-inhibition of ongoing cortical processing. Front Psychol 2: 1-15.
[65]	Kynazev GG, Slobodskoj-Plusnin JY, Bocharov AV, et al. (2011) The default mode network and EEG alpha oscillations: An independent component analysis. Brain Res 1402: 67-79.
[66]	Mantini D, Perrucci MG, Del Gratta C, et al. (2007) Electrophysiological signatures of resting state networks in the human brain. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 104: 13170-13175.
[67]	Guevara MA, Corsi-Cabrera M (1996) EEG coherence or EEG correlation? Int J Psychophysiol 23: 145-153.
[68]	Guevara MA, Hernandez-Gonzalez M, Sanz-Martin A, et al. (2011) EEGCorco: A computer program to simultaneously calculate and statistically analyze EEG coherence and correlation. J Biomed Sci Engineer 4: 774-787.
[69]	Cedrus Corporation (2006) SuperLab Pro: Experimental Laboratory Software [computer software]. Version 4.0. San Pedro (CA): Cedrus Corporation; 2006.
[70]	Bargh JA, Chartrand TL (2000) A practical guide to priming and automaticity research. In Reis H, Judd C, editors. Handbook of research methods in social psychology. New York: Cambridge University Press; 2000. pp. 253-285.
[71]	Barry RJ, Clarke AR, Johnstone SJ, et al. (2007) EEG differences between eyes-closed and eyes-open resting conditions. Clinic Neurophysiol 118: 2765-2773.
[72]	Jung-Beeman M, Bowden EM, Haberman J, et al. (2004) Neural activity when people solve verbal problems with insight. PLoS Biology 2: 500-510.
[73]	Kane MJ, Brown LH, McVay JC, et al. (2007) For whom the mind wanders, and when. Psychol Sci 18: 614-621.
[74]	Dennett DC (1991) Consciousness explained. Boston: Little, Brown; 1991.
[75]	Wundt W (1902/1904) Principles of physiological psychology. Translated from the Fifth German Edition (1904) by Titchener EB. London: Swan Sonnenschein; 1902/1904.
[76]	Corbetta M, Shulman GL (2002) Control of goal-directed and stimulus-driven attention in the brain. Nat Rev Neurosci 3: 201-215.
[77]	Berger H (1933) Über das Elektrenkephalogramm des Menschen. Euro Arch Psychiatry Clinic Neurosci 98: 231-254.
[78]	Logie RH (2011) The functional organization and capacity limits of working memory. Curr Direct Psychol Sci 20: 240-245.
[79]	Nisbett RE, Miyamoto Y (2005) The influence of culture: Holistic versus analytic perception. Trend Cognit Sci 9: 467-473.
[80]	Manning JR, Polyn SM, Baltuch GH, et al. (2011) Oscillatory patterns in temporal lobe reveal context reinstatement during memory search. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 31: 1-6.
[81]	Morsella E, Berger CC, Krieger SC (2011) Cognitive and neural components of the phenomenology of agency. Neurocase 17: 209-230.
[82]	Nisbett RE, Wilson TD (1977) Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychol Rev 84: 231-259.
[83]	Merker B (2012) From probabilities to percepts: A subcortical “global best estimate buffer” as locus of phenomenal experience. In Edelman S, Fekete T, Zach N, editors. Being in time: Dynamical models of phenomenal experience. Netherlands: John Benjamins; 2012. pp. 37-80.
[84]	Awasthi B (2013) Issues and perspectives in meditation research: In search for a definition. Front Psychol 3: 613.
[85]	Echenhofer FG, Coombs MM (1987) A brief review of research and controversies in EEG biofeedback and meditation. J Transpersonal Psychol 19: 161-171.
[86]	Sedimeier P, Eberth J, Schwarz M, et al. (2012) The psychological effects of meditation: A meta-analysis. Psychol Bulletin 138: 1139-1171.
[87]	Morsella E, Riddle TA, Bargh JA (2009) Undermining the foundations: Questioning the basic notions of associationism and mental representations. Behavior Brain Sci 32: 218-219.
[88]	Barron E, Riby LM, Greer J, et al. (2011) Absorbed in thought: The effect of mind wandering on the processing of relevant and irrelevant events. Psychol Sci 22: 596-601. doi: 10.1177/0956797611404083
[89]	Baird B, Smallwood J, Schooler JW (2011) Back to the future: Autobiographical planning and the functionality of mind-wandering. Conscious Cognit 20: 1604-1611.
[90]	Levinson DB, Smallwood J, Davidson RJ (2012) The persistence of thought: Evidence for a role of working memory in the maintenance of task-unrelated thinking. Psychol Sci 23: 375-380. doi: 10.1177/0956797611431465
[91]	Hobbes T (1651/1909) Leviathan or the matter, forme and power of a common wealth ecclesiasticall and civill. Oxford: Clarendon Press; 1651/1909.

Reader Comments

Your name:*

Email:*
© 2016 the Author(s), licensee AIMS Press. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0)