Abstract
Patients with schizophrenia have often been considered to be “in their own world”. However, this casual observation has not been proven by scientific evidence so far. This can be explained because scientific research has usually addressed cognition related to the processing of external stimuli, but only recently have efforts been made to explain thoughts, images and feelings not directly related to the external environment. This internally directed cognition has been called mind wandering. In this paper, we have explored mind wandering in schizophrenia under the hypothesis that a predominance of mind wandering would be a core dysfunction in this disorder. To this end, we collected verbal reports and measured electrophysiological signals from patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders and matched healthy controls while they were presented with segments of films. The results showed that mind wandering was more frequent in patients than in controls. This higher frequency of mind wandering did not correlate with deficits in attentional, memory or executive functioning. In addition, mind wandering in patients was characterized by a different pattern of Electroencephalography (EEG) complexity in patients than in controls, leading to the suggestion that mind wandering in schizophrenia could be of a different nature. These findings could have relevant implications for the conceptualization of this severe mental disorder.
Highlights
Research in cognitive neuroscience has extensively addressed cognitive processes and states that are directed towards external stimuli
We performed a GENLIN of the effect of synchronization between visual and auditory inputs (Sync: Synchrony vs. No Synchrony), the cognitive state reported by participants (Cognitive State: Audio, Image, Full, mind wandering (MW)) and group (Group: CTRL vs SZQ) on the average frequency of responses
Consistent with our initial hypothesis, we found that patients with schizophrenia showed a significantly higher frequency of MW episodes than controls
Summary
Research in cognitive neuroscience has extensively addressed cognitive processes and states that are directed towards external stimuli. Directed cognition is a frequent experience (it covers between 30% and 50% of the waking brain activity), in which attention disengages from the ongoing external context and focuses on thoughts, mental images, or memories[3]. This type of cognition may appear during the performance of an external task or when an individual is not engaged in any external task (see[4] for a review). Activity in the default mode network is reduced when individuals perform externally directed tasks[11] In this line, research has shown that fluctuations between external attention and MW states are governed by dynamic www.nature.com/scientificreports interactions between neural networks. Most phenomenological descriptions of schizophrenia have emphasized a dysfunction of the self in the sense that there would be hyperreflexivity (“an exaggerated self-consciousness”, a tendency for focal attention to be directed towards internal sensations or feelings) along with a disturbance in the perception of the external world[28]
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