School of Psychological Sciences, Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health, Monash University, Melbourne, VIC, Australia.
Institut du Cerveau-Paris Brain Institute-ICM, Sorbonne Université, Inserm, CNRS, Paris, France.
Nat Commun. 2021 Jun 29;12(1):3657. doi: 10.1038/s41467-021-23890-7.
Attentional lapses occur commonly and are associated with mind wandering, where focus is turned to thoughts unrelated to ongoing tasks and environmental demands, or mind blanking, where the stream of consciousness itself comes to a halt. To understand the neural mechanisms underlying attentional lapses, we studied the behaviour, subjective experience and neural activity of healthy participants performing a task. Random interruptions prompted participants to indicate their mental states as task-focused, mind-wandering or mind-blanking. Using high-density electroencephalography, we report here that spatially and temporally localized slow waves, a pattern of neural activity characteristic of the transition toward sleep, accompany behavioural markers of lapses and preceded reports of mind wandering and mind blanking. The location of slow waves could distinguish between sluggish and impulsive behaviours, and between mind wandering and mind blanking. Our results suggest attentional lapses share a common physiological origin: the emergence of local sleep-like activity within the awake brain.
注意缺陷时常发生，与思维漫游有关，此时注意力转移到与当前任务和环境需求无关的思维上，或者出现思维空白，此时意识流停止。为了了解注意缺陷的神经机制，我们研究了健康参与者在执行任务时的行为、主观体验和神经活动。随机中断会促使参与者表明自己的精神状态是专注于任务、思维漫游还是思维空白。我们使用高密度脑电图报告称，与行为标记的注意力缺陷相关，且先于思维漫游和思维空白的报告，出现了空间和时间上局部的慢波，这是一种与向睡眠过渡相关的神经活动模式。慢波的位置可以区分迟钝和冲动的行为，以及思维漫游和思维空白。我们的结果表明，注意力缺陷具有共同的生理起源：在清醒的大脑中出现类似睡眠的局部活动。
