Pleasantness of mind wandering is positively associated with focus back effort in daily life: Evidence from resting state fMRI

Abstract

Despite the dynamic property of consciousness, little research has explored the characteristic of the effort in trying to focus back, in which attention is shifted from mind wandering to ongoing activities. In the current study, we assessed the frequency of daily mind wandering, the pleasantness of daily mind wandering content, and the daily focus back effort of 69 participants, and then collected their resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rsfMRI) scans. Our results revealed that (1) participants who experienced more daily pleasant mind wandering tended to have higher effort in trying to focus back than individuals with less pleasant mind wandering whereas there were no significant relations between pleasantness of mind wandering and mind wandering frequency or between focus back effort and mind wandering frequency in everyday life; (2) the pleasantness of mind wandering and focus back effort were associated with two functional connectivity that related to focus back episodes (right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex-right middle frontal gyrus, right inferior parietal - right middle frontal gyrus). The nodes forming these functional connections belonged to the executive network. Taken together, these findings support the content regulation hypothesis that humans maintain their minds wandering away from unpleasant topics by engaging in executive control processes.

Keywords: Focus back effort; Functional connectivity; Mind wandering; Pleasantness of mind wandering; Resting state.