CAREER: The Neural and Cognitive Basis of Persisting Mental Content

我们的记忆帮助我们每天在世界上执行任务。例如，当我们外出购物时，我们用记忆回忆我们需要购买多少香蕉，在我们离开商店后，我们用记忆在停车场找到我们的车。然而，我们并不只是有意地恢复记忆。相反，我们的记忆会有力地影响我们的生活，即使它们与我们当前的任务无关。例如，当我们站在水果和蔬菜的货架上时，我们可能会发现自己从购物任务中分心，因为我们的脑海中充满了当天早些时候的个人谈话的记忆。更普遍地说，我们都经历过想法“卡在我们的头脑中”或发现最近的事件“在我们的脑海中”。在这种情况下，思想重新进入我们的头脑，而我们却没有积极地去寻找它们。这个项目的目标是了解是什么导致了这些持续的想法，它们是如何在人类大脑中出现的，以及它们的实际成本和收益。它们可能会阻碍我们的进步（例如，通过强化消极情绪），但也可能帮助我们（例如，通过产生解决唠叨问题的方法）。首先，他们研究了持续心理内容的大脑机制。他们假设，持续的想法来自于相同的大脑过程，使人们能够强化记忆并从过去的经验中总结出来。本研究采用实验范式，让被试阅读或聆听沉浸式叙事，以诱发和测量持续性思维。然后，功能性神经成像和颅内记录测量每个人在叙述之前，期间和之后的大脑活动。在同样的环境中，参与者产生的词汇联想被沿着提取出来，并记录下持续的想法。通过这种方式，他们希望绘制出当思想不自觉地进入人们头脑时激活的大脑网络和电路过程。其次，研究人员关注的问题是，为什么精神内容会持续存在，因为它会导致分心或干扰当前的任务。他们假设，心理坚持可以弥合思维中断，使复杂的问题解决和潜在的加深对最近情况的理解。为了验证这一假设，他们使用计算和行为方法来测量持续的心理内容如何影响我们对情景和事件序列的理解。这项工作对于理解思维的连续性如何受到我们在生活中遇到的中断的影响，以及如何保护我们免受这些中断的影响具有重要意义。总体而言，该研究项目旨在揭示产生持续思维的机制，以及如何最大限度地减少持续思维的成本，同时最大限度地提高其效益。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Our memories help us to perform tasks in the world every day. For example, when we are out shopping, we use our memory to recall how many bananas we need to purchase, and after we leave the store, we use our memory to find our car in the parking lot. However, we do not only retrieve our memories intentionally. Instead, our memories powerfully affect our lives even when they are not related to our current task. For example, while we are standing in the fruit and vegetable aisles, we may find ourselves distracted from our shopping task, because our minds are full of memories of a personal conversation earlier in the day. More generally, we have all experienced ideas being “stuck in our heads” or finding that recent events are “on our minds”. In such cases, thoughts re-enter our minds without us actively seeking to retrieve them. The goal of this project is to understand what causes these persistent thoughts, how they emerge in the human brain, and their practical costs and benefits. They may impede our progress (for example, by reinforcing a negative mood) but could also aid us (for example, by generating the solution to a nagging problem).Researchers aim to investigate persisting mental content across two multipart studies. First, they investigate the brain mechanisms of persisting mental content. They hypothesize that persisting thoughts arise from the same brain processes that enable people to reinforce memories and generalize from past experiences. An experimental paradigm in which participants read or listen to immersive narrative is employed, which can be used to induce and measure persisting thoughts. Then functional neuroimaging and intracranial recordings measure each person’s brain activity before, during, and after narratives. In the same setting, the word-associations that participants generate are extracted along with any reports of persisting thoughts. In this way, they hope to map the brain networks and circuit processes that activate when thoughts involuntarily enter people’s minds. Second, the researchers focus on the question of why mental content persists, given that it can cause distraction or interference with a current task. They hypothesize that mental persistence can bridge interruptions in thinking, enabling complex problem solving and potentially deepening the understanding of a recent situation. To test this hypothesis, they use computational and behavioral methods to measure how persisting mental content affects our comprehension of sequences of situations and episodes. This work has powerful implications for understanding how the continuity of thought is impacted by, and protects against, the interruptions that we encounter in life. Overall, this program of research aims to uncover the mechanisms that generate persisting thoughts, as well as how to minimize the costs of persisting thoughts while maximizing their benefits.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.