A core goal in cognitive neuroscience is identifying the physical substrates of the patterns of thought that occupy our daily lives. Contemporary views suggest that the landscape of ongoing experience is heterogeneous and can be influenced by features of both the person and the context. This perspective piece considers recent work that explicitly accounts for both the heterogeneity of the...
Contemporary accounts of ongoing thought recognise it as a heterogeneous and multidimensional construct, varying in both form and content. An emerging body of evidence demonstrates that distinct types of experience are associated with unique neurocognitive profiles, that can be described at the whole-brain level as interactions between multiple large-scale networks. The current study sought to...
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...
Cognition is dynamic, allowing us the flexibility to shift focus from different aspects of the environment, or between internally- and externally-oriented trains of thought. Although we understand how individuals switch attention across different tasks, the neurocognitive processes that underpin the dynamics of less constrained elements of cognition are less well understood. To explore this...
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...
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...
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...
When not engaged in the moment, we often spontaneously represent people, places and events that are not present in the environment. Although this capacity has been linked to the default mode network (DMN), it remains unclear how interactions between the nodes of this network give rise to particular mental experiences during spontaneous thought. One hypothesis is that the core of the DMN...
Abstract: 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...