New paper: Toward a model-based cognitive neuroscience of mind wandering

paper
Published

September 21, 2015

New paper: Toward a model-based cognitive neuroscience of mind wandering

I am happy to announce that our review paper on a model-based cognitive neuroscience approach to the study of mind-wandering has been accepted for publication in Neuroscience, (Hawkins et al., accepted). This paper summarizes many of the theoretical ideas that we have been discussing in our group for quite some time and also reviews and integrates the research done so far. Actually, the number of research papers actually using cognitive process models to investigate mind wandering has been quite rare (e.g., Bastian & Sackgur, 2013) and our own paper, (Mittner et al., 2014) but there are a few instances where we can reinterpret the results in terms of mind wandering. I am really excited about the regression-based approach that is outlined in the paper and we are working on implementing this kind of model at the moment. Expect more in that direction soon!

References

  • Hawkins G. E., Mittner, M., Boekel, W., Heathcote, A. and Forstmann, B.U. (accepted). Toward a model-based cognitive neuroscience of mind wandering. Neuroscience. link

  • Bastian M and Sackur J (2013) Mind wandering at the fingertips: automatic parsing of subjective states based on response time variability. Front. Psychol. 4:573. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00573

  • Mittner, M., Boekel, W., Tucker, A. M., Turner, B.M., Heathcote, A. and Forstmann, B.U. (2014). When the brain takes a break: A model-based analysis of mind wandering. Journal of Neuroscience, 34(49):16286-95.