Spontaneous Thoughts Research Articles

Questioning the technological fix to climate change – Lay sense-making of geoengineering in Sweden

This paper explores how Swedish laypeople make sense of emerging ideas of the large-scale deliberate technical manipulation of the global climate, known as geoengineering (GE). The paper is based on semi-structured focus group interviews with open-ended questions, allowing participants to express their spontaneous thoughts about GE. Although the focus group participants expressed great concern about climate change, GE was largely met with a sceptical, negative response. Participants perceived GE to: have negative environmental side-effects, address the symptoms rather than causes of climate change, create moral hazard and give rise to various governance challenges. Participants did not just reject the idea of GE outright; rather, social representations started to form in the focus groups through testing and negotiating arguments both pro and contra GE research and deployment.

Neural responses to heartbeats dissociate the self as the subject and the self as the object during spontaneous thoughts

Event Abstract Back to Event Neural responses to heartbeats dissociate the self as the subject and the self as the object during spontaneous thoughts Mariana Babo-Rebelo1*, Craig Richter2 and Catherine Tallon-Baudry2 1 Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives / Ecole Normale Superieure, Institut d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Superieure, France 2 Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives, Institut d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Superieure, France The most fundamental sense of self is represented in the first-person perspective. This sense of self known as the 'I' is distinct from the 'Me', the most often studied form of self which relates to explicit reflection about oneself. Here, we propose and test the hypothesis that the neural implementation of the 'I' is rooted in bodily signal monitoring by the central nervous system. We developed a new thought sampling paradigm in which subjects evaluated how much they were thinking as the subject ('I') and as the object ('Me'). In practice, 20 subjects fixated the screen and mind-wandered until a warning stimulus occurred at random interval. Subjects would then rate the thought that was interrupted by the warning according to 4 continuous scales: self as subject, self as object, time and valence. Magnetoencephalographic data and cardiac activity were recorded simultaneously. We measured neural responses to heartbeats preceding warning onset to test whether the amplitude of neural responses to heartbeats could predict subjects' ratings on the 'I' scale. We tested the difference in heart-evoked responses between high and low scores for each scale using a cluster-based permutation t-test. We found a significant cluster for the 'I' dimension, over posterior magnetometers between 300 and 328ms after the T-peak (Monte-Carlo, p=0.024). The 'Me' dimension was associated with a significant frontal cluster, between 120 and 155ms after the T-peak (p=0.026). A General Linear Model approach is currently being developed to test to what extent activity in these clusters is specific to each dimension of the self. This would confirm that neural responses to heartbeats reference thoughts to the self and distinguish between 'I' and 'Me'. Keywords: Magnetoencephalography, Psychophysiology, self, resting state, mind-wandering, brain-body interactions Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Attention Citation: Babo-Rebelo M, Richter C and Tallon-Baudry C (2015). Neural responses to heartbeats dissociate the self as the subject and the self as the object during spontaneous thoughts. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00017 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Mrs. Mariana Babo-Rebelo, Laboratoire de Neurosciences Cognitives / Ecole Normale Superieure, Institut d'Etudes Cognitives, Ecole Normale Superieure, Paris, France, mariana.b.rebelo@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Mariana Babo-Rebelo Craig Richter Catherine Tallon-Baudry Google Mariana Babo-Rebelo Craig Richter Catherine Tallon-Baudry Google Scholar Mariana Babo-Rebelo Craig Richter Catherine Tallon-Baudry PubMed Mariana Babo-Rebelo Craig Richter Catherine Tallon-Baudry Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.

Neural correlates of generation and inhibition of verbal association patterns in mood disorders.

Thought disorders such as rumination or flight of ideas are frequent in patients with mood disorders, and not systematically linked to mood state. These symptoms point to anomalies in cognitive processes mediating the generation and control of thoughts; for example, associative thinking and inhibition. However, their neural substrates are not known. To obtain an ecological measure of neural processes underlying the generation and suppression of spontaneous thoughts, we designed a free word association task during fMRI allowing us to explore verbal associative patterns in patients with mood disorders and matched controls. Participants were presented with emotionally negative, positive or neutral words, and asked to produce two words either related or unrelated to these stimuli. Relative to controls, patients produced a reverse pattern of answer typicality for the related vs unrelated conditions. Controls activated larger semantic and executive control networks, as well as basal ganglia, precuneus and middle frontal gyrus. Unlike controls, patients activated fusiform gyrus, parahippocampal gyrus and medial prefrontal cortex for emotional stimuli. Mood disorder patients are impaired in automated associative processes, but prone to produce more unique/personal associations through activation of memory and self-related areas.

Professional values, technology and future health care: The view of health care professionals in The Netherlands

Perceptions and values of care professionals are critical in successfully implementing technology in health care. The aim of this study was threefold: (1) to explore the main values of health care professionals, (2) to investigate the perceived influence of the technologies regarding these values, and (3) the accumulated views of care professionals with respect to the use of technology in the future. In total, 51 professionals were interviewed. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was applied. All care professionals highly valued being able to satisfy the needs of their care recipients. Mutual inter-collegial respect and appreciation of supervisors was also highly cherished. The opportunity to work in a careful manner was another important value. Conditions for the successful implementation of technology involved reliability of the technology at hand, training with team members in the practical use of new technology, and the availability of a help desk. Views regarding the future of health care were mainly related to financial cut backs and with a lower availability of staff. Interestingly, no spontaneous thoughts about the role of new technology were part of these views. It can be concluded that professionals need support in relating technological solutions to care recipients' needs. The role of health care organisations, including technological expertise, can be crucial here.

Persons and Their Private Personas: Living with Yourself

Persons and Their Private Personas: Living with Yourself

Revue des effets de la méditation de pleine conscience sur la santé mentale et physique et sur ses mécanismes d’action

Interventions based on mindfulness have become increasingly popular. This article reviews the empirical literature on its effects on mental and physical health, discusses presumed mechanisms of action as well as its proposed neurobiological underpinning. Mindfulness is associated with increased well-being as well as reduced cognitive reactivity and behavioral avoidance. It seems to contribute to enhance immune functions, diminish inflammation, diminish the reactivity of the autonomic nervous system, increase telomerase activity, lead to higher levels of plasmatic melatonin and serotonin. It enhances the quality of life for patients suffering from chronic pain, fibromylagia and HIV infection. It facilitates adaptation to the diagnosis of cancer and diabetes. It seems to lead to symptomatic improvement in irritable bowel syndrome, chronic fatigue syndrome, hot flashes, insomnia, stress related hyperphagia. It diminishes craving in substance abuse. The proposed mechanism of action are enhanced metacognitive conscience, interoceptive exposure, experiential acceptance, self-management, attention control, memory, relaxation. Six mechanism of actions for which neurological underpinnings have been published are: attention regulation (anterior cingulate cortex), body awareness (insula, temporoparietal junction), emotion regulation (modulation of the amygdala by the lateral prefrontal cortex), cognitive re-evaluation (activation of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex or diminished activity in prefrontal regions), exposure/extinction/reconsolidation (ventromedial prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, amygdala) and flexible self-concept (prefrontal median cortex, posterior cingulated cortex, insula, temporoparietal junction). The neurobiological effects of meditation are described. These are: (1) the deactivation of the default mode network that generates spontaneous thoughts, contributes to the maintenance of the autobiographical self and is associated with anxiety and depression; (2) the anterior cingulate cortex that underpins attention functions; (3) the anterior insula associated with the perception of visceral sensation, the detection of heartbeat and respiratory rate, and the affective response to pain; (4) the posterior cingulate cortex which helps to understand the context from which a stimulus emerges; (5) the temporoparietal junction which assumes a central role in empathy and compassion; (6) the amygdala implicated in fear responses. The article ends with a short review of the empirical basis supporting the efficacy for mindfulness based intervention and suggested directions for future research.

Rwandan young people's perceptions on sexuality and relationships: Results from a qualitative study using the ‘mailbox technique’

This study aimed to gain more insight into young Rwandans’ perceptions on sex and relationships, which is essential for formulating effective sexual and reproductive health (SRH) promotion interventions. Using a ‘mailbox technique’, this paper studies the spontaneous thoughts of Rwandan young people on sexuality. Mailboxes were installed in five secondary schools in the Bugesera district and students were invited to write about their ideas, secrets, wishes, desires and fears on sexuality and relationships. Of the 186 letters collected, 154 addressed SRH topics. The letters were analysed in NVivo 9 using a theoretical model on vulnerability. Two stereotypical sexual interactions co-exist: experimental sex, taking place unprepared, driven by desire among young people of the same age, and transactional sex, occurring after negotiation between older men/women and younger girls/boys in exchange for money or goods. Both types expose young people to poor, though different, SRH outcomes. Young people have little capacity to manage their vulnerability in these relationships: they have limited knowledge on SRH topics, lack adult guidance or support and have difficult access to condoms. They apply seemingly contradictory norms and behaviours concerning sexuality. In conclusion, we have formulated several recommendations for SRH interventions.

The (perceived) meaning of spontaneous thoughts.

Spontaneous thoughts, the output of a broad category of uncontrolled and inaccessible higher order mental processes, arise frequently in everyday life. The seeming randomness by which spontaneous thoughts arise might give people good reason to dismiss them as meaningless. We suggest that it is precisely the lack of control over and access to the processes by which they arise that leads people to perceive spontaneous thoughts as revealing meaningful self-insight. Consequently, spontaneous thoughts potently influence judgment. A series of experiments provides evidence supporting two hypotheses. First, we hypothesize that the more a thought is perceived to be spontaneous, the more it is perceived to provide meaningful self-insight. Participants perceived more spontaneous kinds of thought (e.g., intuition) to reveal greater self-insight than did more controlled kinds of thought in Study 1 (e.g., deliberation). In Studies 2 and 3, participants perceived thoughts with the same content and target to reveal greater self-insight when spontaneously rather than deliberately generated (i.e., childhood memories and impressions formed). Second, we hypothesize that the greater self-insight attributed to thoughts that are (perceived to be) spontaneous leads those thoughts to more potently influence judgment. Participants felt more sexually attracted to an attractive person whom they thought of spontaneously than deliberately in Study 4, and reported their commitment to a current romantic relationship would be more affected by the spontaneous rather than deliberate recollection of a good or bad experience with their romantic partner in Study 5.

Off to never-never land: losing consciousness to gain thought

In this issue of Brain , Smaranda Leu-Semenescu and colleagues describe one aspect of a rare and fascinating neuropsychological syndrome—auto-activation deficit (AAD)—in which patients with specific basal ganglia lesions experience an almost total loss of self-driven behaviour that can partially be reversed by external stimulation. Indeed, when questioned, some patients with AAD will consistently report a complete absence of spontaneous thoughts. For healthy individuals, spontaneous thoughts are not only a feature of waking life; they are also a common feature of that component of sleep that we call dreams. Leu-Semenescu and colleagues therefore asked whether the absence of mental content reported by patients with AAD also persisted during sleep—that is, are individuals with no spontaneous waking thoughts able to dream? As described in their article, sleep stages were recorded from each of a group of 13 patients with AAD and a group of matched healthy controls using a combination of EEG and other physiological measures. During periods of both rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM sleep, all participants were awoken and asked to report their mental contents immediately before waking. Surprisingly, despite reporting a total absence of mental content during wakefulness, some patients with AAD nevertheless reported dream contents, primarily during REM sleep. …

Freedom of the mind

OPINION article Front. Psychol., 27 August 2013Sec. Perception Science https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00538

Comparison of efficiency of cognitive therapy and logo therapy on the depression rate of aged men

In this paper, we compare the effectiveness of logo therapy (LT) and cognitive therapy (CT) in alleviating symptoms of depression. For this purpose 45 elderly men aged between 65 to 85 years who inhabit in nursing houses were randomly put into two experimental and one control group (n = 45). The experimental groups received techniques of cognitive and logo therapies for 10 treatment sessions, 75 min for each sessions per week. All depressed participants were assessed using the 15-question Geriatric depression scale (GDS-15) before and after the treatment and the results were analyzed by two sample t-test, ANOVA and Tukey test. The results indicated that there were significant differences between the experimental groups and the control group. Both CT and Logo therapy reduced symptoms of depression. Analysis of the results of Tukey test showed that CT had the most and the control group had the least depression and logo therapy was also effective in reducing the disorder. Based on the results we conclude that CT and Logo therapy can be effective non-pharmacological treatment options for reducing negative spontaneous thoughts and depression, and increase quality of life and psychosocial functioning. Key words: Depression, cognitive therapy, logo therapy.

Are Female and Male Meridians Different? Some Spontaneous Thoughts

Are Female and Male Meridians Different? Some Spontaneous Thoughts

Tragedy Viewers Count Their Blessings

Hypotheses were derived from downward comparison and attachment theory to address the tragedy paradox: more sadness produces greater tragedy enjoyment. Participants ( n = 361) watched a tragedy and reported affect, enjoyment, life happiness, and spontaneous thoughts (categorized into self- vs. socio-focused). Greater sadness led to greater enjoyment, mediated by life reflection; specifically, both self- and socio-focused thoughts mediated this sadness impact on tragedy enjoyment. Furthermore, more sadness led to greater life happiness increase during exposure, mediated by socio-focused thoughts only. No parallel effects emerged for positive affect. The present findings suggest that tragedy-induced sadness instigates (a) life reflection that increases tragedy enjoyment as well as (b) specifically thoughts about close relationships that, in turn, raise life happiness, which (c) subsequently increases tragedy enjoyment further.

How daydreaming relates to life satisfaction, loneliness, and social support: The importance of gender and daydream content

Daydreaming appears to have a complex relationship with life satisfaction and happiness. Here we demonstrate that the facets of daydreaming that predict life satisfaction differ between men and women (Study 1; N=421), that the content of daydreams tends to be social others (Study 2; N=17,556), and that who we daydream about influences the relation between daydreaming and happiness variables like life satisfaction, loneliness, and perceived social support (Study 3; N=361). Specifically, daydreaming about people not close to us predicts more loneliness and less perceived social support, whereas daydreaming about close others predicts greater life satisfaction. Importantly, these patterns hold even when actual social network depth and breadth are statistically controlled, although these associations tend to be small in magnitude. Individual differences and the content of daydreams are thus important to consider when examining how happiness relates to spontaneous thoughts.

Appraisals, psychotic symptoms and affect in daily life

Psychological models of psychosis were examined using Experience Sampling Methods (ESM) to explore relationships between dimensions and appraisals of key symptoms and affect. Individuals were signalled to complete ESM booklets 10 times per day for six consecutive days; 534 data points were obtained from 12 out-patients with psychosis. Although only 3.6% of spontaneous thoughts were psychosis related, these predicted more negative and less positive affect. Delusions and hallucinations, when present, were rated at a moderate level of intensity, and intensity was associated with distress, interference and preoccupation. Symptom dimensions were related to each other, with weaker associations with delusional conviction, which, it is hypothesized, may represent a separate factor. Conviction and appraisals relating to insight and decentring ('my problems are something to do with the way my mind works') were highly variable. Decentring appraisals of delusions, but not insight, were associated with less distress. Appraisals about the power of voices were strong predictors of negative affect and symptom distress. This study demonstrates that ESM is a useful methodology to capture 'online' variability in psychotic phenomenology and provides evidence supporting cognitive models, which posit that psychotic symptoms are multi-dimensional phenomena, shaped by appraisals that, in turn, predict their emotional and behavioural sequelae.

Brain activity at rest: a multiscale hierarchical functional organization

Spontaneous brain activity was mapped with functional MRI (fMRI) in a sample of 180 subjects while in a conscious resting-state condition. With the use of independent component analysis (ICA) of each individual fMRI signal and classification of the ICA-defined components across subjects, a set of 23 resting-state networks (RNs) was identified. Functional connectivity between each pair of RNs was assessed using temporal correlation analyses in the 0.01- to 0.1-Hz frequency band, and the corresponding set of correlation coefficients was used to obtain a hierarchical clustering of the 23 RNs. At the highest hierarchical level, we found two anticorrelated systems in charge of intrinsic and extrinsic processing, respectively. At a lower level, the intrinsic system appears to be partitioned in three modules that subserve generation of spontaneous thoughts (M1a; default mode), inner maintenance and manipulation of information (M1b), and cognitive control and switching activity (M1c), respectively. The extrinsic system was found to be made of two distinct modules: one including primary somatosensory and auditory areas and the dorsal attentional network (M2a) and the other encompassing the visual areas (M2b). Functional connectivity analyses revealed that M1b played a central role in the functioning of the intrinsic system, whereas M1c seems to mediate exchange of information between the intrinsic and extrinsic systems.

The Spontaneous Thoughts of the Night: How Future Tasks Breed Intrusive Cognitions

Everyone has had the experience of trying to clear one's mind before going to sleep, only to have intrusive cognitions about future tasks (e.g., giving a speech, solving a financial conundrum) perturb consciousness. Similar cognitions can interfere with other goals (e.g., to concentrate while driving). We propose that intrusive cognitions are far from indeterminate and reflect the ‘prospective’ nature of the brain. We hypothesize that they are triggered automatically by future tasks that may benefit from forethought. Accordingly, during a meditation-like exercise requiring one to clear the mind of excess thought and focus on just one thing (breathing), participants reported more intrusive cognitions about a future task that could benefit from forethought than when they anticipated no future task or anticipated a task that, though of comparable difficulty and content, could not benefit from forethought. This finding illuminates conditions such as rumination and the prospective nature of the brain.

Evidence for the Default Network's Role in Spontaneous Cognition

A set of brain regions known as the default network increases its activity when focus on the external world is relaxed. During such moments, participants change their focus of external attention and engage in spontaneous cognitive processes including remembering the past and imagining the future. However, the functional contributions of the default network to shifts in external attention versus internal mentation have been difficult to disentangle because the two processes are correlated under typical circumstances. To address this issue, the present study manipulated factors that promote spontaneous cognition separately from those that change the scope of external attention. Results revealed that the default network increased its activity when spontaneous cognition was maximized but not when participants increased their attention to unpredictable foveal or peripheral stimuli. To examine the nature of participants' spontaneous thoughts, a second experiment used self-report questionnaires to quantify spontaneous thoughts during extended fixation epochs. Thoughts about one's personal past and future comprised a major focus of spontaneous cognition with considerable variability. Activity correlations between the medial temporal lobe and distributed cortical regions within the default network predicted a small, but significant, portion of the observed variability. Collectively, these results suggest that during passive states, activity within the default network reflects spontaneous, internally directed cognitive processes.

Spontaneous repetitive thoughts can be adaptive: Postscript on “mind wandering”.

When researchers use the term mind wandering for task-unrelated thoughts in signal detection tasks, we may fall into the trap of believing that spontaneous thoughts are task unrelated in a deeper sense. Similar negative connotations are attached to common terms like cognitive failures, resting state, rumination, distraction, attentional failures, absent-mindedness, repetitiveness, mind lapses, going AWOL in the brain, cortical idling, and the like. Nevertheless, it seems obvious that mathematicians and scientists often engage in spontaneous repetitive thoughts and that the results of those thoughts are by no means maladaptive. Yet that seems to be implied by the standard use of common terms in the research literature. As humans, we know that spontaneous ideation goes on during all of our waking hours, during dreams and even in slow-wave sleep. It is unlikely that such a great allocation of mental resources has no useful adaptive function. This view of the spontaneous stream is consistent with the perspective of global workspace theory on conscious contents, which suggests that conscious events are not like unconscious cognitive representations. Rather, conscious events trigger widespread adaptive changes in the brain, far beyond their cortical origins. The brain evidence for such "global broadcasting" triggered by conscious (but not matched unconscious) events throughout the cortex is now quite compelling. Spontaneous conscious thoughts, even if they appear to be arbitrary, irrelevant, unwanted, or intrusive, may still play an important adaptive role in life-relevant problem solving and learning.

Grand Challenge of psychopathology in the years to come

Grand Challenge of psychopathology in the years to come