Vékony Teodóra, Farkas Bence C, Brezóczki Bianka, Mittner Matthias, Csifcsák Gábor, Simor Péter, Németh Dezső
Centre de Recherche en Neurosciences de Lyon CRNL U1028 UMR5292, INSERM, CRNS, Université Claude Bernard Lyon 1, 69500 Bron, France.
Gran Canaria Cognitive Research Center, Department of Education and Psychology, University of Atlántico Medio, 35017 Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Spain.
iScience. 2025 Jan 4;28(2):111703. doi: 10.1016/j.isci.2024.111703. eCollection 2025 Feb 21.
The human brain spends 30-50% of its waking hours engaged in mind-wandering (MW), a common phenomenon in which individuals either spontaneously or deliberately shift their attention away from external tasks to task-unrelated internal thoughts. Despite the significant amount of time dedicated to MW, its underlying reasons remain unexplained. Our pre-registered study investigates the potential adaptive aspects of MW, particularly its role in predictive processes measured by statistical learning. We simultaneously assessed visuomotor task performance as well as the capability to extract probabilistic information from the environment while assessing task focus (on-task vs. MW). We found that MW was associated with enhanced extraction of hidden, but predictable patterns. This finding suggests that MW may have functional relevance in human cognition by shaping behavior and predictive processes. Overall, our results highlight the importance of considering the adaptive aspects of MW, and its potential to enhance certain fundamental cognitive abilities.
人类大脑在清醒时间的30%-50%都处于走神状态，这是一种常见现象，即个体要么自发地，要么刻意地将注意力从外部任务转移到与任务无关的内部想法上。尽管花费在走神上的时间很多，但其背后的原因仍未得到解释。我们预先注册的研究调查了走神的潜在适应性方面，特别是其在通过统计学习测量的预测过程中的作用。我们在评估任务专注度（专注任务与走神）的同时，还评估了视觉运动任务表现以及从环境中提取概率信息的能力。我们发现，走神与增强对隐藏但可预测模式的提取有关。这一发现表明，走神可能通过塑造行为和预测过程在人类认知中具有功能相关性。总体而言，我们的结果凸显了考虑走神适应性方面的重要性，以及它增强某些基本认知能力的潜力。
