When
Jonathan Smallwood, Ph.D.
Professor, Department of Psychology
Queen's University
States of mind and brain
Abstract: A core goal of psychology and neuroscience is to understand the patterns of thought that occupy our daily lives and how these contribute to well-being and productivity. Contemporary views suggest that the landscape of ongoing thought is heterogeneous and can be influenced by features of both the person and the context in which they exist. This talk considers recent work that uses state-of-the-art experience sampling and advanced brain imaging methods to understand the different features of ongoing experience, their context dependence and how these are supported by different brain systems. These studies reveal distinct pattern of thought that emerge in a context dependent manner in both the lab and in daily life. These include patterns of episodic social cognition, that emerge during social interaction or during states of mind-wandering, and, patterns of deliberate task focus that are linked to the process of executive control and emerge while at work or during complex task in the laboratory. Studies using brain imaging establish that these distinct patterns of thought have specific associations with brain activity, particularly with regions of association cortex, including the fronto-parietal and the default mode networks. Together, this work demonstrates that the landscape of ongoing thought is heterogeneous, reflected in the activity of multiple neural systems and supports features of cognition important acting efficiently in the moment, as well as the capacity to explore distant times and places using imagination.