Chapter 5 - Imagination and mind wandering: two sides of the same coin? A brain dynamics perspective

Abstract

The renewed interest in mind wandering has produced a wealth of knowledge about brain mechanisms underlying the generation of spontaneous thoughts and stimulus-independent cognition. However, how this phenomenon relates to the more classically defined imagination, with which it shares several key phenomenological and psychological features, remains largely unexplored. Here, we discuss whether and how imagination relates to mind wandering and whether they depend on similar brain mechanisms. We pay particular attention to the spontaneous/deliberate contrast in both these phenomena and the importance of considering thought contents, modality, temporality, and emotional valence when studying stimulus-independent cognition. We draw from recent advances in brain connectivity studies to analyze the role that the brain's default mode network (DMN) might have in articulating these two pervasive aspects of human mental life. It appears that such an integrative process is likely to depend on a highly dynamical DMN, one that cannot be reduced simply to a resting state or self-related network. Ultimately, this challenges the idea that mind wandering and imagination are substantially different processes and suggests that it might be worth looking at them as part of the same type of self-generated mental activity.