Nature Communications
August 23, 2019
Adam Turnbull, Hao-ting Wang, Charlotte Murphy et al.
197 citations
When environments lack compelling goals, humans often let their minds wander to thoughts with greater personal relevance; however, we currently do not understand how this context-dependent prioritisation process operates. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) maintains goal representations in a context-dependent manner. Here, we show this region is involved in prioritising off-task thought in...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
August 27, 2018
Mladen Sormaz, Charlotte Murphy, Hao-ting Wang et al.
291 citations
Regions of transmodal cortex, in particular the default mode network (DMN), have historically been argued to serve functions unrelated to task performance, in part because of associations with naturally occurring periods of off-task thought. In contrast, contemporary views of the DMN suggest it plays an integrative role in cognition that emerges from its location at the top of a cortical...
Neuroimage
January 12, 2018
Charlotte Murphy, Elizabeth Jefferies, Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer et al.
288 citations
The default mode network supports a variety of mental operations such as semantic processing, episodic memory retrieval, mental time travel and mind-wandering, yet the commonalities between these functions remains unclear. One possibility is that this system supports cognition that is independent of the immediate environment; alternatively or additionally, it might support higher-order...
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
March 21, 2017
Giulia Poerio, Mladen Sormaz, Hao-ting Wang et al.
185 citations
Experiences such as mind-wandering illustrate that cognition is not always tethered to events in the here-and-now. Although converging evidence emphasises the default mode network (DMN) in mind-wandering, its precise contribution remains unclear. The DMN comprises cortical regions that are maximally distant from primary sensory and motor cortex, a topological location that may support the...