Human cognition is not always tethered to events in the external world. Laboratory and real world experience sampling studies reveal that attention is often devoted to self-generated mental content rather than to events taking place in the immediate environment. Recent studies have begun to explicitly examine the consistency between states of off-task thought in the laboratory and in daily life, highlighting differences in the psychological correlates of these states across the two contexts. Our study used neuroimaging to further understand the generalizability of off-task thought across laboratory and daily life contexts. We examined (1) whether context (daily life versus laboratory) impacts on individuals’ off-task thought patterns and whether individual variations in these patterns are correlated across contexts; (2) whether neural correlates for the patterns of off-task thoughts in the laboratory show similarities with those thoughts in daily life, in particular, whether differences in cortical grey matter associated with detail and off-task thoughts in the para-hippocampus, identified in a prior study on laboratory thoughts, were apparent in real life thought patterns. We also measured neural responses to common real-world stimuli (faces and scenes) and examined how neural responses to these stimuli were related to experiences in the laboratory and in daily life - finding evidence of both similarities and differences. There were consistent patterns of off-task thoughts reported across the two contexts, and both patterns had a commensurate relationship with medial temporal lobe architecture. However, compared to real world off-task thoughts, those in the laboratory focused more on social content and showed a stronger correlation with neural activity when viewing faces compared to scenes. Overall our results show that off-task thought patterns have broad similarities in the laboratory and in daily life, and the apparent differences may be, in part, driven by the richer environmental context in the real world. More generally, our findings are broadly consistent with emerging evidence that shows off-task thoughts emerge through the prioritisation of information that has greater personal relevance than events in the here and now.

中文翻译：

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正视为什么会走神：任务外的实验室思维模式与处理面部刺激时右侧梭状皮层的更强神经募集有关

人类的认知并不总是受限于外部世界的事件。实验室和现实世界的经验抽样研究表明，注意力往往集中在自我生成的心理内容上，而不是发生在直接环境中的事件上。最近的研究已经开始明确检查实验室和日常生活中的非任务思维状态之间的一致性，突出了这两种情况下这些状态的心理相关性的差异。我们的研究使用神经影像学来进一步了解跨实验室和日常生活环境的任务外思维的普遍性。我们检查了 (1) 环境（日常生活与实验室）是否会影响个人的非任务思维模式，以及这些模式中的个体差异是否与环境相关；(2) 实验室中非任务思维模式的神经相关性是否显示出与日常生活中的想法相似，特别是皮质灰质与海马旁的细节和非任务思维相关的差异是否已确定在之前对实验室思维的研究中，在现实生活中的思维模式中很明显。我们还测量了对常见现实世界刺激（面部和场景）的神经反应，并检查了对这些刺激的神经反应如何与实验室和日常生活中的经历相关——寻找相似和不同的证据。在这两种情况下报告了一致的任务外思维模式，并且这两种模式与内侧颞叶结构具有相称的关系。然而，与现实世界的非任务思维相比，与场景相比，实验室中的人更关注社交内容，并且在查看面部时显示出与神经活动更强的相关性。总体而言，我们的结果表明，任务外的思维模式在实验室和日常生活中具有广泛的相似性，明显的差异可能部分是由现实世界中更丰富的环境背景驱动的。更一般地说，我们的发现与新出现的证据大致一致，这些证据表明，任务外的想法是通过优先处理比此时此地的事件具有更大个人相关性的信息而出现的。明显的差异可能部分是由现实世界中更丰富的环境背景造成的。更一般地说，我们的发现与新出现的证据大体一致，这些证据表明，任务外的想法是通过优先考虑与此时此地的事件相比具有更大个人相关性的信息而出现的。明显的差异可能部分是由现实世界中更丰富的环境背景造成的。更一般地说，我们的发现与新出现的证据大体一致，这些证据表明，任务外的想法是通过优先考虑与此时此地的事件相比具有更大个人相关性的信息而出现的。