Danckert James, Merrifield Colleen
Department of Psychology, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo, ON, N2L 3G1, Canada.
Exp Brain Res. 2018 Sep;236(9):2507-2518. doi: 10.1007/s00221-016-4617-5. Epub 2016 Mar 15.
Boredom is a ubiquitous human experience that can best be described as an inability to engage with one's environment despite the motivation to do so. Boredom is perceived as a negative experience and demonstrates strong associations with other negatively valenced states including depression and aggression. Although boredom has been shown to be elevated in neurological and psychiatric illnesses, little is known about the neural underpinnings of the state. We scanned the brains of healthy participants under four separate conditions: a resting state scan, a sustained attention task and two video-based mood inductions, one known to produce boredom and another we validated to produce a state of interest or engagement. Using independent components analyses, results showed common regions of correlated activation in posterior regions of the so-called default mode network (DMN) of the brain across all four conditions. The sustained attention and boredom induction scans were differentiated from the resting state scan by the presence of anticorrelated activity-i.e. when DMN regions were active, this region was deactivated-in the anterior insula cortex. This same region demonstrated correlated activity with both the DMN and the regions associated with attentional control during the interest mood induction. We interpret these findings to suggest that boredom represents a failure to engage executive control networks when faced with a monotonous task-in other words, when the task demands some level of engagement (watch the movie, search for infrequent targets), but is so mundane that attempts to do so fail.
无聊是一种普遍存在的人类体验，最恰当的描述是尽管有动力与周围环境互动，但却无法做到。无聊被视为一种负面体验，并与包括抑郁和攻击性在内的其他负性情绪状态密切相关。尽管无聊在神经和精神疾病中有所增加，但人们对这种状态的神经基础知之甚少。我们在四种不同条件下对健康参与者的大脑进行了扫描：静息状态扫描、持续注意力任务以及两种基于视频的情绪诱导，一种已知会产生无聊感，另一种经我们验证会产生兴趣或参与状态。使用独立成分分析，结果显示在所有四种条件下，大脑所谓默认模式网络（DMN）后部区域存在共同的相关激活区域。持续注意力和无聊诱导扫描与静息状态扫描的区别在于前岛叶皮质存在反相关活动，即当DMN区域活跃时，该区域被去激活。在兴趣情绪诱导期间，同一区域显示出与DMN以及与注意力控制相关区域的相关活动。我们对这些发现的解释是，无聊代表在面对单调任务时无法启用执行控制网络——换句话说，当任务需要一定程度的参与（观看电影、搜索不常见目标），但却如此平凡以至于这样做的尝试失败时。
