Mind-Wandering in Adolescents Predicts Worse Affect and Is Linked to Aberrant Default Mode Network-Salience Network Connectivity
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry June 12, 2020 Christian A. Webb, Elana S. Israel, Emily L. Belleau et al.
Adolescents with anhedonia (AH) experience mind-wandering more frequently (70.0% of sampled moments) than typically developing (TD) peers (59.2%), and their mind-wandering tends toward unpleasant content. Mind-wandering is linked to higher concurrent negative affect, even after accounting for current activity, social context, and rumination. Bidirectional time-lagged analyses show mind-wandering and positive affect influence each other over time. Among AH adolescents, more mind-wandering is associated with stronger resting-state functional connectivity between the medial prefrontal cortex (a core Default Mode Network hub) and networks for attentional control and salience detection, suggesting heightened influence of affective and sensory salience on internally-oriented thought.