Measuring the psychophysical and EEG signature of boredom.

无聊是一种无处不在的人类经历，伴随着一系列负面结果，从抑郁和焦虑的加剧到吸毒和赌博的问题。我们的实验室探索了无聊体验的认知、心理和神经基础，以及与那些具有高度无聊倾向的人的个人特征的关联。所需的设备是我成功资助的NSERC发现计划的心理物理和神经方面所需的(我还获得了DAS和DND补充资金，这将为实验室的两名博士后研究员提供资金-详情请参阅预算理由)。*无聊文学中一个长期存在的争论是关于经历的生理特征的性质。一些人声称无聊是一种高度唤醒的体验，而另一些人则声称它是一种接近(生理)睡眠的低性唤醒状态。我们最初属于高唤醒阵营(Merrifield&Danckert，2014)，但最近的实验室工作表明，无聊最好同时被认为是高唤醒和低唤醒(Danckert等人，2018)。后一项工作是基于自我报告的无聊、不安和昏昏欲睡的情况，这些条件要么令人厌烦，要么引人入胜。现在需要的是一种动态测量与无聊相关的心理物理学的方法。我们希望首先重复我们之前的发现，即无聊与较高的心率和较低的皮肤电导水平有关，然后再使用更具体的测量方法(射血前阶段和心率变异性)来探索随着时间的推移无聊的心理物理特征的本质。*很少有研究研究与无聊有关的脑电特征。在一项研究中(Santesso等人，2008年)，无聊易感性与前额α波段功率的不对称性有关。我们最近在9至14岁的儿童中进行了这种测量(与布罗克大学的蒂娜·威洛比博士合作)，发现前部的theta能力区分了厌烦倾向的高和低，而后部则区分了阿尔法波段中容易产生厌烦的高和低。我们要求在健康的年轻人中使用静息状态脑电和任务相关事件相关电位来探索这些关系，这些电位将询问无聊和执行控制之间的关系。最后，据我们所知，还没有研究检查无聊体验的心理物理和电生理特征与特质无聊倾向之间的关系。这一RTI将使心理物理和脑电测量相结合，将使我们在理解这一重要的、迄今未被研究的人类经验方面取得巨大进步。

Boredom is a ubiquitous human experience associated with a raft of negative outcomes, from increased depression and anxiety to problems with drugs of addiction and gambling. Our lab explores the cognitive, psychophysical and neural bases of the experience of boredom and the association with individual traits in those high in boredom proneness. The requested equipment is needed for the psychophysical and neural aspects of my successfully funded NSERC Discovery program (I was also awarded DAS and DND Supplements which will fund two Postdoctoral Fellows in the lab - see Budget Justification for details). ******A long standing debate in the boredom literature concerns the nature of the physiological signature of the experience. Some claim boredom is a high arousal experience while other claim it to be a low arousal state approximating (physiologically) sleep. We initially came down on the high arousal camp (Merrifield & Danckert, 2014), but recent work in the lab suggests that boredom should best be considered both high and low arousal (Danckert et al., 2018). The latter work was based on self-reports of boredom, restlessness and sleepiness in conditions intended to be either boring or engaging. What is needed now is a dynamic measure of the psychophysics associated with boredom. We expect to first replicate our earlier finding that boredom is associated with higher heart rate and lower skin conductance levels, before using more specific measures (Pre-ejection phase and heart rate variability) to probe the nature of the psychophysical signature of boredom over time.******Very few studies have examined the EEG signature related to boredom. In one (Santesso et al., 2008), boredom susceptibility was associated with an asymmetry of frontal alpha band power. We have recently explored this kind of measure in children aged 9 to 14 years (in collaboration with Dr. Teena Willoughby at Brock University) and find that frontal theta power differentiates between those high and low in boredom proneness, whereas posterior sites differentiate the high and low boredom prone in the alpha band. We are requesting equipment to probe these relations in healthy young adults using both resting state EEG and task-related event-related potentials that will interrogate the relation between boredom and executive control.******Finally, to our knowledge no study has examined the relation between the psychophysical and electrophysiological signatures of the experience of boredom and the association with trait boredom proneness. The combination of psychophysical and EEG measures that would be enabled by this RTI would lead to huge advances in our understanding of this consequential, and hitherto understudied, human experience.