Cognitive control and semantic thought variability across sleep and wakefulness
March 14, 2023 Remington Mallett, Yasmeen Nahas, Kalina Christoff et al. 2 citations preprint
The flow of thought is persistent and sometimes unpredictable, and understanding what influences how thoughts shift from moment to moment has implications for disorders like schizophrenia and recurrent nightmares. This study examined whether cognitive control limits moment-to-moment content shifts across sleep and wakefulness. Thought variability was measured as semantic incoherence between sequential thought phrases in dreaming and waking reports. During wakefulness, on-task conditions showed reduced thought variability compared to off-task conditions, and thought variability was greater when thoughts wandered freely. During sleep, lucid dreams, which involve higher cognitive control, showed reduced thought variability compared to non-lucid dreams. These results suggest that cognitive control may limit thought variability across the 24-hour cycle of thought generation, consistent with the Dynamic Framework of Thought.