ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2021
Distinct electrophysiological signatures of task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 26 papers, 2 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
26 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 68 citations in OpenAlex.
- The Relative Accuracy of Different Methods for Measuring Mind Wandering Subtypes: A Systematic Review.Brain and behavior · 2025Pooled it
- Ecological momentary assessment of mind-wandering: meta-analysis and systematic review.Scientific reports · 2023Pooled it
- Temporal kinetics of brain state effects on visual perception.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Flexible brain state engagement predicts cognitive control transdiagnostically.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2026Article
- Phenomenology of the stream of thought: dissociable dynamic dimensions revealed through experience sampling.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Differential role of beta band activity in a dual-task working memory paradigm under internally vs. externally directed cognition.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
- Decoding the cascading architecture of creative ideation: an ERP study.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Neural Sensitivity to the Heartbeat Is Modulated by Fluctuations in Affective Arousal during Spontaneous Thought.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- The role of working memory capacity on the neural mechanisms of mind wandering in drilling crews.Experimental brain research · 2025Article
- Neural sensitivity to the heartbeat is modulated by fluctuations in affective arousal during spontaneous thought.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2025Article
- Neural dynamics of spontaneous memory recall and future thinking in the continuous flow of thoughts.Nature communications · 2025Article
- Avoidant Automatic Thoughts Are Associated With Task Avoidance and Inattention in the Moment: Replication in a Community Sample.Journal of attention disorders · 2025Article
- Enhanced individual difference of functional brain network induced by volitional eyes closing.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Electrophysiological signatures of ongoing thoughts during naturalistic behavior.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Daily dynamics of the temporal orientations of mind wandering: chronotype matters!Neuroscience of consciousness · 2025Article
- How Freely Moving Mind Wandering Relates to Creativity: Behavioral and Neural Evidence.Brain sciences · 2024Article
- Color and brightness at work: Shedding some light on mind wandering.Brain and behavior · 2024Article
- Recent advances in the neuroscience of spontaneous and off-task thought: implications for mental health.Nature. Mental health · 2023Article
- Long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation modulates EEG dynamics during self-schema processing.Heliyon · 2023Article
- Relationships between resting-state EEG functional networks organization and individual differences in mind wandering.Scientific reports · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Humans spend much of their lives engaging with their internal train of thoughts. Traditionally, research focused on whether or not these thoughts are related to ongoing tasks, and has identified reliable and distinct behavioral and neural correlates of task-unrelated and task-related thought. A recent theoretical framework highlighted a different aspect of thinking-how it dynamically moves between topics. However, the neural correlates of such thought dynamics are unknown. The current study aimed to determine the electrophysiological signatures of these dynamics by recording electroencephalogram (EEG) while participants performed an attention task and periodically answered thought-sampling questions about whether their thoughts were 1) task-unrelated, 2) freely moving, 3) deliberately constrained, and 4) automatically constrained. We examined three EEG measures across different time windows as a function of each thought type: stimulus-evoked P3 event-related potentials and non-stimulus-evoked alpha power and variability. Parietal P3 was larger for task-related relative to task-unrelated thoughts, whereas frontal P3 was increased for deliberately constrained compared with unconstrained thoughts. Frontal electrodes showed enhanced alpha power for freely moving thoughts relative to non-freely moving thoughts. Alpha-power variability was increased for task-unrelated, freely moving, and unconstrained thoughts. Our findings indicate distinct electrophysiological patterns associated with task-unrelated and dynamic thoughts, suggesting these neural measures capture the heterogeneity of our ongoing thoughts.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.