Distinct Electrophysiological Signatures of Intentional and Unintentional Mind-Wandering Revealed by Low-Frequency EEG Markers

Abstract

Mind-wandering is typically characterized by the common experience wherein attention veers off into thoughts unrelated to the task at hand. Recent research highlights the intentionality dimension of mind-wandering as a key predictor of adverse functional outcomes with intentional and unintentional task-unrelated thought (TUT) differentially linked to neural, behavioral, clinical, and functional correlates. We here aimed to elucidate the electrophysiological underpinnings of intentional and unintentional TUT by systematically examining the individual and collective discriminative power of a large set of EEG markers to distinguish between attentional states. Univariate and multivariate analyses were conducted on 54 predefined markers belonging to four conceptual families: ERP, spectral, information theory and connectivity measures, extracted from scalp EEG recordings prior to multidimensional reports of ongoing thought from participants performing a sustained attention task. We report here that on-task, intentional and unintentional TUT exhibit distinct electrophysiological signatures in the low frequency range. More specifically, increased features of the theta frequency range were found to be most discriminative between on-task and off-task states, while features within the alpha band were characteristic of intentional TUT when compared to unintentional TUT. This result is theoretically well aligned with contemporary accounts describing alpha activity as an index of internally oriented attention and a potential mechanism to shield internal processes from sensory input. Our study verifies the validity of the intentionality dimension of mind-wandering and represents a step forward towards real-time detection and mitigation of maladaptive mind-wandering.