On the role of prefrontal and parietal cortices in mind wandering and dynamic thought

Abstract

Mind wandering is a common phenomenon in our daily lives and can have both an adaptive and detrimental impact. Recently, a dynamic framework has been proposed to characterise the heterogeneity of internal thoughts, suggesting there are three distinct thought types which can change over time – freely moving, deliberately constrained, and automatically constrained (thoughts). There is currently very little evidence on how different types of dynamic thought are represented in the brain. Previous research has applied non-invasive transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to causally implicate the prefrontal cortex and inferior parietal lobule in mind wandering. However, a more recently developed and nuanced technique, high-definition tDCS (HD-tDCS), delivers more focal stimulation able to target specific brain regions. Therefore, the current study investigated the effect of anodal HD-tDCS applied to the left prefrontal and right inferior parietal cortices (with the occipital cortex included as an active control) on mind wandering, and specifically, the causal neural substrates of the three internal dynamic thought types. This was a single session study using a novel task which allows investigation into how dynamic thoughts are associated with behavioural variability and the recruitment of executive control operations across the three brain regions. There was no evidence to support our hypothesised effect of stimulation reducing task unrelated thought. Furthermore, the hypothesis driven analyses found no evidence of stimulation affecting the dynamic thought types, nor any evidence for our hypothesised effects of stimulation reducing behavioural variability and increasing randomness. There was only evidence for a relationship between these two measures of performance when participants thoughts were freely moving. However, there was evidence from our exploratory analyses that anodal stimulation to the prefrontal cortex decreased freely moving thought and anodal stimulation to the parietal lobule decreased deliberately constrained thought, relative to the sham conditions. The exploratory analyses also suggested stimulation may increase freely moving thought in the occipital cortex. Overall, these findings suggest stimulation does not affect the dynamic thought types, however there is preliminary evidence to support the heterogenous nature of mind wandering, whereby different brain regions may be causally implicated in distinct dynamic thought types.