Department of Psychology, University of New Hampshire, Durham, NH, USA.
Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Philos Trans R Soc Lond B Biol Sci. 2021 Feb;376(1817):20190692. doi: 10.1098/rstb.2019.0692. Epub 2020 Dec 14.
Thoughts that appear to come to us 'out of the blue' or 'out of nowhere' are a familiar aspect of mental experience. Such thoughts tend to elicit feelings of surprise and spontaneity. Although we are beginning to understand the neural processes that underlie the arising of such thoughts, little is known about what accounts for their peculiar phenomenology. Here, we focus on one central aspect of this phenomenology-the experience of surprise at their occurrence, as it relates to internal probabilistic predictions regarding mental states. We introduce a distinction between two phenomenologically different types of transitions in thought content: (i) , which occur at surprising times but lead to unsurprising thought content, and (ii) , which occur at surprising times and also lead to surprising thought content. We examine these two types of transitions using a novel approach that combines probabilistic and predictive processing concepts and principles. We employ two different probability metrics-transition and occurrence probability-to characterize and differentiate between abrupt and wayward transitions. We close by discussing some potentially beneficial ways in which these two kinds of transitions in thought content may contribute to mental function, and how they may be implemented at the neural level. This article is part of the theme issue 'Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation'.
那些似乎“突如其来”或“无迹可寻”的想法是我们精神体验中常见的一个方面。这类想法往往会引起我们惊讶和自发的感觉。虽然我们开始理解这些想法产生背后的神经过程，但对于它们奇特现象学的解释知之甚少。在这里，我们专注于这一现象学的一个核心方面——即对其出现的惊讶体验，因为这与关于心理状态的内部概率预测有关。我们引入了一种区别思维内容中两种不同的现象学转变类型的方法：(i) 突然出现但导致不令人惊讶的思维内容的转变，以及 (ii) 突然出现且导致令人惊讶的思维内容的转变。我们使用一种结合了概率和预测处理概念和原则的新方法来检验这两种类型的转变。我们使用两种不同的概率度量——转变概率和出现概率——来描述和区分突然和任性的转变。最后，我们讨论了思维内容中这两种类型的转变可能对心理功能有何潜在益处，以及它们可能如何在神经水平上实现。本文是主题为“离线感知：没有匹配外部刺激的自愿和自发感知体验”的一部分。
