Examining the cognitive and neural bases of boredom.

无聊是一种常见的人类体验，在有药物滥用问题的人和神经病患者中普遍存在。虽然无聊已经在工作/学术成就，生活方式满意度，个性和冒险行为方面进行了研究，但很少有研究探讨这种体验的神经和认知基础。这是真的，尽管事实上，增加无聊水平与严重的神经系统疾病，如注意力缺陷多动障碍（ADHD）和创伤性脑损伤（TBI）。这里提出的工作有三个主要方面：首先是探索心理物理反应（即，心率和与压力有关的皮质醇激素水平的变化）到无聊的状态。其次，这项工作将探索注意力和无聊之间的关系--容易无聊的人在短期和持续注意力任务中是否也难以控制注意力？最后，我们将使用功能性磁共振成像来检查与无聊相关的神经网络。在整个过程中，我们将检查健康个体和TBI患者的表现，他们报告无聊程度升高。这项工作代表了一种协调一致的方法来理解无聊的认知和神经机制，在许多层面上都很重要。首先，它将开发一个更简洁的定义无聊，其认知机制和神经相关。其次，它将有助于我们理解注意力在无聊中的作用，并将注意力的日常失误与无聊联系起来，并对应用环境产生影响（例如，装配线工作），这种失误可能会产生可怕的后果。最后，这项工作将有助于动机的基础科学。无聊代表着刺激-奖励关系的中断。理解这种破坏将对类似损害明显的情况产生影响（例如，强迫症、药物成瘾）。因此，这项工作将对动机、奖励处理和决策的基础科学产生广泛的影响。

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.