Peter Daniel Simor
Research Project
Mind-wandering and information-processing: learning through disconnection
Project Abstract
Mind-wandering
Mind-wandering refers to a mental state when attention drifts away from the current task, becomes minimally constrained by the external environment, and descends into internally generated thoughts involving past experiences, imagined events, and anticipated future goals. Studies indicate that task-unrelated thoughts impair cognitive performance in paradigms requiring sustained attention and executive control, reading comprehension, complex decision making, working memory, or fluid intelligence. Moreover, mind-wandering appears to have cognitive costs that extend to everyday life, and is seemingly associated with negative affect, as well as adverse mental health outcomes. Despite the apparent burden of mind-wandering, humans spend at least one-third of their waking hours lost in such self-generated mental content. What are the benefits of such a pervasive state? Why do humans engage in a mental state that evidently compromises behavior and accurate responses to environmental inputs?
Mind-wandering and information processing
Influential theories suggest that mind-wandering may facilitate future planning and goal setting, by shifting attention to personally relevant goals and concerns, and hence, serving as a self-reminding process for unresolved intentions. Recent evidence indicates that at least under certain boundary conditions, mind-wandering is linked to enhanced creativity and prospective memory. Such processes may benefit from the nature of mind-wandering: the unconstrained flow of self-relevant thoughts extracting patterns of personally meaningful events and combining these into novel, but usually realistic simulations of future outcomes. Although the hypotheses about mind-wandering’s adaptive significance are conceptually appealing, compelling and robust empirical evidence in this regard is still scarce and remains elusive to some extent. The goal of the present research project is to investigate the putative benefits of mind-wandering in relation to information processing. Moreover, the project aims to unravel the underlying neural mechanisms of mind-wandering with regards to covert, local sleep states and state transitions. In a recent behavioral study, Peter Simor aimed to delineate the costs and benefits of mind-wandering in the frames of an implicit visuomotor probabilistic learning task (ASRT – Alternating Serial Reaction Time Task). Peter Simor observed that mind-wandering was associated with enhanced statistical learning reflecting improved predictive processing. More specifically, when participants were not focusing on the task but wandered away, they performed better in extracting the hidden but predictable patterns from a stream of visual inputs without being aware of the underlying pattern. Peter Simor proposed that mind-wandering might reflect transient off-line states facilitating the processing (consolidation) of previously encoded information.
Mind-wandering and local sleep
Peter Simor’s working hypothesis is that off-line states during wakefulness (experienced as mind-wandering) exert similar influence on previously encoded information as post-learning sleep. A large body of evidence has been accumulated during the last three decades regarding the beneficial influence of post-learning sleep on information processing. Although the idea that memories are specifically strengthened during sleep is intellectually appealing, recent studies question the exclusive role of sleep in consolidating previously encoded material and suggest that periods of waking rest are equally beneficial for memory consolidation. In line with the notion that sleep and wakefulness are not mutually exclusive brain states, recent studies indicate that the waking brain often shows signs of local sleep-like activities (i.e., expressed as slow frequency activity that is not widespread as in sleep, but limited to certain neural regions). Notably, local sleep during wakefulness is associated with impaired behavioral performance and lapses of attention. Moreover, local slow waves were linked to the subjective experience of mind-wandering during attention-demanding tasks. In line with these findings, Peter Simor proposes that as a transient off-line state, mind-wandering is associated with the processing of previously encoded information at the expense of sensorimotor processing. Transient and local sleep entering into the wakeful state is defined as the occurrence of slow wave activity (the main feature of slow wave sleep) producing so-called transient off-line states in wakefulness; nevertheless, sleep-like activities in wakefulness may not be restricted to the pressure of slow wave sleep. Features of other sleep states such as REM sleep may also occur and produce transient activities in wakefulness. Neural indicators of covert REM sleep were observed outside of REM sleep, especially in sleep-wake transitions. REM sleep is the sleep state when the most intense forms of dreaming occur, especially in the second half of the night. Since mind-wandering is characterized by sensory disengagement and by immersion in internally driven mental processes, it is assumed to be at least partly akin to dreaming as experienced during sleep. Reports of dreaming and mind-wandering show many similarities in their content, temporality, emotional and self-referent nature, and also seem to emerge on the background of a shared neural network. Therefore, Peter Simor assumes that daytime mind-wandering beyond local slow waves may also be triggered by transient REM-like activities (REM intrusions) during wakefulness.
The aim of Peter Simor’s Iméra fellowship is to work on a comprehensive review that contextualizes and discusses the putative role of mind-wandering in information processing, and elaborates on the influence of covert sleep states on the phenomenological and neurocognitive aspects of mind-wandering in healthy and pathological conditions. This interdisciplinary approach aims to integrate the scientific achievements of basic and clinical sleep research, the cognitive neuroscience of learning and memory, as well as the study of consciousness and subjective experience.
In parallel with the theoretical work, Peter Simor aims to collaborate on several empirical research projects during the fellowship and continue to perform experimental research studies focusing on the neural, behavioral, and phenomenological aspects of mind-wandering using a combination of diverse cutting-edge techniques and data collection procedures.
Biography
Peter Simor is a cognitive psychologist with a special interest in the neuroscience of sleep. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2014 in the Cognitive Science Department of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics. Peter Simor’s doctoral research focused on the neurophysiological aspects of nightmare disorder and highlighted the key mechanism of hyperarousal in the pathophysiology of frequent nightmares. Although Peter Simor’s lab continues the research activity on nightmare disorder, his research area has become broader, including topics such as the microstructure of REM sleep, sleep and memory, lucid dreaming, the role of sleep and dream quality in psychotic experiences, and the role of mind-wandering in information processing.
Currently, Peter Simor is the head of the Budapest Laboratory of Sleep and Cognition at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. He works mainly with sleep EEG in addition to cognitive tests and psychometric measures to study the complex nature of sleep and its role in daytime functions. Beyond his academic activity, Peter Simor often gives talks about sleep and dreaming for a wider audience to popularize and highlight the relevance of sleep research.
