A Correspondence between Individual Differences in the Brain's Intrinsic Functional Architecture and the Content and Form of Self-Generated Thoughts

By Krzysztof J. Gorgolewski, Daniel J. Lurie, Sebastian Urchs, J. Kipping, R. Craddock, Michael P. Milham, Daniel S. Margulies, J. Smallwood. 2014

169 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Although neural activity often reflects the processing of external inputs, intrinsic fluctuations in activity have been observed throughout the brain. These may relate to patterns of self-generated thought that can occur while not performing goal-driven tasks. To understand the relationship between self-generated mental activity and intrinsic neural fluctuations, we developed the New York Cognition Questionnaire (NYC-Q) to assess the content and form of an individual's experiences during the acquisition of resting-state fMRI data. The data were collected as a part of the Nathan Kline Rockland Enhanced sample. We decomposed NYC-Q scores using exploratory factor analysis and found that self-reported thoughts clustered into distinct dimensions of content (future related, past related, positive, negative, and social) and form (words, images, and specificity). We used these components to perform an individual difference analysis exploring how differences in the types of self-generated thoughts relate to whole brain measures of intrinsic brain activity (fractional amplitude of low frequency fluctuations, regional homogeneity, and degree centrality). We found patterns of self-generated thoughts related to changes that were distributed across a wide range of cortical areas. For example, individuals who reported greater imagery exhibited greater low frequency fluctuations in a region of perigenual cingulate cortex, a region that is known to participate in the so-called default-mode network. We also found certain forms of thought were associated with other areas, such as primary visual cortex, the insula, and the cerebellum. For example, individuals who reported greater future thought exhibited less homogeneous neural fluctuations in a region of lateral occipital cortex, a result that is consistent with the claim that particular types of self-generated thought depend on processes that are decoupled from sensory processes. These data provide evidence that self-generated thought is a heterogeneous category of experience and that studying its content can be helpful in understanding brain dynamics.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

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Citations in the corpus

The wandering brain: Meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies of mind-wandering and related spontaneous thought processes (2015, unknown): “507 Other researchers, instead of directly contrasting one type of thought 508 with another, have instead used various measures of intrinsic connec509 tivity throughout the brain to attempt to predict either the content 510 (Gorgolewski et al., 2014) or frequency (Kucyi and Davis, 2014; Wang 511 et ”
Exploring the role of the posterior middle temporal gyrus in semantic cognition: Integration of anterior temporal lobe with executive processes (2016, unknown): “For the NKI data, we used the same participants as in a previous investigation (Gorgolewski et al., 2014), since the data was already available.”
Questions and controversies in the study of time-varying functional connectivity in resting fMRI (2020, unknown): “Retrospective reports (e.g., post-scan questionnaires; Delamillieure et al., 2010; Diaz et al., 2013; Gorgolewski et al., 2014) avoid this potential pitfall, but at the cost of significantly reduced temporal resolution.”
The science of mind wandering: empirically navigating the stream of consciousness. (2015, methodology): “Finally, studies have examined the different forms of thoughts including imagery and words, the specificity of the experience, and the relevance of the thought to the individual (Delamillieure et al. 2010, Gorgolewski et al. 2014).”
Can brain state be manipulated to emphasize individual differences in functional connectivity? (2017, background): “Candidate brain states for measuring individual differences Rest, the default condition for functional connectivity research, has undeniable benefits (Greicius, 2008; Smith et al., 2013).”