Benjamin Baird

Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering

Given that the ability to attend to a task without distraction underlies performance in a wide variety of contexts, training one’s ability to stay on task should result in a similarly broad enhancement of performance. In a randomized controlled investigation, we examined whether a 2-week mindfulness-training course would decrease mind wandering and improve cognitive performance. Mindfulness training improved both GRE reading-comprehension scores and working memory capacity while simultaneously reducing the occurrence of distracting thoughts during completion of the GRE and the measure of working memory. Improvements in performance following mindfulness training were mediated by reduced mind wandering among participants who were prone to distraction at pretesting. Our results suggest that cultivating mindfulness is an effective and efficient technique for improving cognitive function, with wide-reaching consequences.

Inspired by Distraction Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation

Although anecdotes that creative thoughts often arise when one is engaged in an unrelated train of thought date back thousands of years, empirical research has not yet investigated this potentially critical source of inspiration. We used an incubation paradigm to assess whether performance on validated creativity problems (the Unusual Uses Task, or UUT) can be facilitated by engaging in either a demanding task or an undemanding task that maximizes mind wandering. Compared with engaging in a demanding task, rest, or no break, engaging in an undemanding task during an incubation period led to substantial improvements in performance on previously encountered problems. Critically, the context that improved performance after the incubation period was associated with higher levels of mind wandering but not with a greater number of explicitly directed thoughts about the UUT. These data suggest that engaging in simple external tasks that allow the mind to wander may facilitate creative problem solving.

Back to the future: autobiographical planning and the functionality of mind-wandering

Given that as much as half of human thought arises in a stimulus independent fashion, it would seem unlikely that such thoughts would play no functional role in our lives. However, evidence linking the mind-wandering state to performance decrement has led to the notion that mind-wandering primarily represents a form of cognitive failure. Based on previous work showing a prospective bias to mind-wandering, the current study explores the hypothesis that one potential function of spontaneous thought is to plan and anticipate personally relevant future goals, a process referred to as autobiographical planning. The results confirm that the content of mind-wandering is predominantly future-focused, demonstrate that individuals with high working memory capacity are more likely to engage in prospective mind-wandering, and show that prospective mind-wandering frequently involves autobiographical planning. Together this evidence suggests that mind-wandering can enable prospective cognitive operations that are likely to be useful to the individual as they navigate through their daily lives.

The role of mind-wandering in measurements of general aptitude

Tests of working memory capacity (WMC) and fluid intelligence (gF) are thought to capture variability in a crucial cognitive capacity that is broadly predictive of success, yet pinpointing the exact nature of this capacity is an area of ongoing controversy. We propose that mind-wandering is associated with performance on tests of WMC and gF, thereby partially explaining both the reliable correlations between these tests and their broad predictive utility. Existing evidence indicates that both WMC and gF are correlated with performance on tasks of attention, yet more decisive evidence requires an assessment of the role of attention and, in particular, mind-wandering during performance of these tests. Four studies employing complementary methodological designs embedded thought sampling into tests of general aptitude and determined that mind-wandering was consistently associated with worse performance on these measures. Collectively, these studies implicate the capacity to avoid mind-wandering during demanding tasks as a potentially important source of success on measures of general aptitude, while also raising important questions about whether the previously documented relationship between WMC and mind-wandering can be exclusively attributed to executive failures preceding mind-wandering (McVay & Kane, 2010b).

Medial and lateral networks in anterior prefrontal cortex support metacognitive ability for memory and perception

Convergent evidence indicates that frontopolar Brodmann area 10, and more generally the anterior prefrontal cortex (aPFC), supports the human capacity to monitor and reflect on cognition and experience. An important unanswered question, however, is whether aPFC is a homogeneous region that supports a general-purpose metacognitive ability or whether there could be regional specialization within aPFC with respect to specific types of metacognitive processes. Previous studies suggest that the lateral and medial subdivisions within aPFC may support metacognitive judgments of moment-to-moment perceptual processes and assessments of information from memory stored over longer time scales, respectively. Here we directly compared intraindividual variability in metacognitive capacity for perceptual decisions and memorial judgments and used resting-state functional connectivity (rs-fcMRI) to relate this variability to the connectivity of the medial and lateral regions of aPFC. We found a behavioral dissociation in metacognitive ability for perceptual and memorial judgments. Furthermore, functional connectivity analysis revealed distinct patterns of connectivity that correlated with individual differences in each domain. Metacognitive ability for perceptual decisions was associated with greater connectivity between lateral regions of aPFC and right dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, bilateral putamen, right caudate, and thalamus, whereas metacognitive ability for memory retrieval predicted greater connectivity between medial aPFC and the right central precuneus and intraparietal sulcus/inferior parietal lobule. Together, these results suggest that an individuals capacity for accurate introspection in the domains of perception and memory is related to the functional integrity of unique neural networks anchored in the medial and lateral regions of the aPFC.

Escaping the here and now: evidence for a role of the default mode network in perceptually decoupled thought.

Cognition that is not based on perception can lead to at least two different outcomes. In some situations, cognition that is independent of perception can allow actions to be selected other than those prescribed by immediate perceptual input. In others, cognition can be independent of perception and unrelated to the current behavioral goal allowing thoughts to develop that are largely independent of the actions involved in an external task. The default mode network (DMN) has been implicated in both of these kinds of perceptually decoupled thought. The current experiment used functional magnetic resonance imaging to explore whether a common region of this network was co-activated by both of these states. Both the medial pre-frontal cortex and the posterior cingulate - two major hubs of the DMN - showed greater activity when (i) actions that did not depend upon immediate perceptual input were faster and (ii) when actions based on perceptual input were slower. Together these data suggest that the DMN is important in cognition that is independent from perceptual input regardless of whether such thoughts result in action, or, instead compete with the behavioral goals of the moment.

The decoupled mind: Mind-wandering disrupts cortical phase-locking to perceptual events

The mind flows in a “stream of consciousness,” which often neglects immediate sensory input in favor of focusing on intrinsic, self-generated thoughts or images. Although considerable research has documented the disruptive influences of task-unrelated thought for perceptual processing and task performance, the brain dynamics associated with these phenomena are not well understood. Here we investigate the possibility, suggested by several convergent lines of research, that task-unrelated thought is associated with a reduction in the trial-to-trial phase consistency of the oscillatory neural signal in response to perceptual input. Using an experience sampling paradigm coupled with continuous high-density electroencephalography, we observed that task-unrelated thought was associated with a reduction of the P1 ERP, replicating prior observations that mind-wandering is accompanied by a reduction of the brain-evoked response to sensory input. Time–frequency analysis of the oscillatory neural response revealed a decrease in theta-band cortical phase-locking, which peaked over parietal scalp regions. Furthermore, we observed that task-unrelated thought impacted the oscillatory mode of the brain during the initiation of a task-relevant action, such that more cortical processing was required to meet task demands. Together, these findings document that the attenuation of perceptual processing that occurs during task-unrelated thought is associated with a reduction in the temporal fidelity with which the brain responds to a stimulus and suggest that increased neural processing may be required to recouple attention to a task. More generally, these data provide novel confirmatory evidence for the mechanisms through which attentional states facilitate the neural processing of sensory input.

Insulation for Daydreams: A Role for Tonic Norepinephrine in the Facilitation of Internally Guided Thought

Although consciousness can be brought to bear on both perceptual and internally generated information, little is known about how these different cognitive modes are coordinated. Here we show that between-participant variance in thoughts unrelated to the task being performed (known as task unrelated thought, TUT) is associated with longer response times (RT) when target presentation occurs during periods when baseline Pupil Diameter (PD) is increased. As behavioral interference due to high baseline PD can reflect increased tonic activity in the norepinephrine system (NE), these results might implicate high tonic NE activity in the facilitation of TUTs. Based on these findings, it is hypothesised that high tonic mode NE leads to a generalised de-amplification of task relevant information that prioritses internally generated thought and insulates it from the potentially disruptive events taking place in the external environment.

The default modes of reading: Modulation of posterior cingulate and medial prefrontal cortex connectivity associated with comprehension and task focus while reading

Reading is a fundamental human capacity and yet it can easily be derailed by the simple act of mind-wandering. A large-scale brain network, referred to as the default mode network (DMN), has been shown to be involved in both mind-wandering and reading, raising the question as to how the same neural system could be implicated in processes with both costs and benefits to narrative comprehension. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) was used to explore whether the intrinsic functional connectivity of the two key midline hubs of the DMN—the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and anterior medial prefrontal cortex (aMPFC)—was predictive of individual differences in reading comprehension and task focus recorded outside of the scanner. Worse comprehension was associated with greater functional connectivity between the PCC and a region of the ventral striatum. Better comprehension was associated with greater functional connectivity with a region of the right insula. By contrast reports of increasing task focus were associated with functional connectivity from the aMPFC to clusters in the PCC, the left parietal and temporal cortex, and the cerebellum. Our results suggest that the DMN has both costs (such as poor comprehension) and benefits to reading (such as an on-task focus) because its midline core can couple its activity with other regions to form distinct functional communities that allow seemingly opposing mental states to occur. This flexible coupling allows the DMN to participate in cognitive states that complement the act of reading as well as others that do not.

The Middle Way: Finding the Balance between Mindfulness and Mind-Wandering

Abstract Mind-wandering is a common everyday experience in which attention becomes disengaged from the immediate external environment and focused on internal trains of thought. This chapter reviews progress in the study of mind-wandering and its manifold effects on cognition and affect. After summarizing key recent advances in the study of mind-wandering, we focus on three fundamentally practical questions: (1) What are the costs of mind-wandering for cognition and affect? (2) Is it possible to reduce mind-wandering with practices aimed at enhancing mindfulness? (3) What are some possible benefits of mind-wandering that may help to mitigate its costs? This chapter leads to the endorsement of a “middle way” approach to mind-wandering: though it may be useful to cultivate practices for overcoming some of mind-wanderings more disruptive consequences, we should not seek to eliminate it entirely, as it can offer some unique benefits when carried out at the appropriate times.