Examining the cognitive and neural bases of boredom.

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Boredom is a common human experience that is prevalent among those with substance abuse problems and in neurological patients. While boredom has been examined in terms of workplace/academic achievement, lifestyle satisfaction, personality and risk taking behaviour, very little research has examined the neural and cognitive underpinnings of the experience. This is true despite the fact that increased boredom levels are associated with serious neurological conditions such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and traumatic brain injury (TBI). The work proposed here has three main arms: first to explore the psychophysical reaction (i.e., changes in heart rate and levels of the hormone cortisol which is associated with stress) to being in a state of boredom. Second, the work will explore the relationship between attention and boredom - do people who are prone to boredom also have difficulty controlling attention both in the short-term and in sustained attention tasks? Finally, we will use functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine the neural networks associated with boredom. Throughout, we will examine performance in healthy individuals and in TBI patients who report elevated levels of boredom. This work represents a concerted approach to understanding the cognitive and neural mechanisms of boredom and is important on a number of levels. First, it will develop a more concise definition of boredom, its cognitive mechanisms and neural correlates. Second, it will contribute to our understanding of the role of attention in boredom and will relate everyday lapses in attention to boredom with implications for applied settings (e.g., assembly line work), where such lapses can have dire consequences. Finally, the work will contribute to the basic science of motivation. Boredom represents a disruption to stimulus-reward relationships. Understanding this disruption will have implications for conditions in which similar impairments are evident (e.g., obsessive-compulsive disorder, drug addiction). Thus, this work will have broad implications for the basic science of motivation, reward processing and decision making.