wandering mind metaphor

30 Metaphors for Mind: The Depths of Human Cognition

One way to grasp this complexity is through metaphors—imaginative comparisons that help us make sense of abstract concepts.

In this article, we delve into various metaphors for the mind, shedding light on its multifaceted nature.

What is a Metaphor for Mind?

Metaphors for the mind are creative expressions that liken the workings of the brain and consciousness to tangible or familiar objects, places, or experiences.

These metaphors serve as linguistic tools to convey the abstract and intangible aspects of human cognition in a more accessible and relatable manner.

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When you’re trying to understand something, your mind is like a puzzle, trying to fit all the pieces together. You can find more comparisons for the mind at Similes for Mind and Idioms for Mind .

Metaphors for Mind

1. garden of thoughts.

The mind can be likened to a garden of thoughts, where ideas bloom and flourish, nourished by the soil of curiosity and imagination.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a garden full of growing thoughts and ideas.

In a Sentence: As I wandered through the garden of thoughts in my mind, new ideas blossomed with each step.

2. Library of Ideas

Within the mind’s library of ideas, shelves are lined with volumes of knowledge and imagination, waiting to be explored and shared.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a library filled with ideas and knowledge.

In a Sentence: Every time I read a book, it feels like adding another volume to my personal library of ideas.

3. Ocean of Consciousness

The depths of consciousness are vast and mysterious, much like the endless expanse of an ocean, where thoughts ebb and flow like waves.

Meaning: The mind is compared to an ocean, symbolizing its vastness and depth.

In a Sentence: Lost in the ocean of consciousness, I found myself adrift amidst a sea of thoughts.

4. Battlefield of Emotions

Emotions clash and collide within the battlefield of the mind, where joy, sorrow, and everything in between vie for dominance.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a battlefield where emotions contend with each other.

In a Sentence: In the battlefield of emotions, happiness and sadness engaged in an eternal struggle for supremacy.

5. Palace of Memories

Memories reside in the palace of the mind, each one a precious gem adorning the halls of our consciousness.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a palace where memories are stored and cherished.

In a Sentence: Walking through the palace of memories, I relived moments long past with a sense of nostalgia.

6. Canvas of Imagination

The mind serves as a canvas upon which the brushstrokes of imagination paint vivid landscapes of dreams and fantasies.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a canvas where imagination creates vivid images and scenarios.

In a Sentence: With a blank canvas of imagination before me, I let my creativity run wild, painting scenes of wonder and delight.

7. Theater of Dreams

Dreams unfold like scenes upon the stage of the mind’s theater, where reality and fantasy intertwine in a captivating spectacle.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a theater where dreams and fantasies play out.

In a Sentence: Night after night, the theater of dreams showcased a myriad of fantastical tales and adventures.

8. Maze of Thoughts

Navigating the maze of thoughts in our minds can be a challenging journey, with twists and turns at every corner.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a maze, highlighting the complexity of our thoughts.

In a Sentence: Lost in the maze of thoughts, I struggled to find my way back to clarity and understanding.

9. River of Cognition

Thoughts flow like a steady river through the channels of cognition, shaping our perceptions and understanding of the world.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a river, symbolizing the continuous flow of thoughts.

In a Sentence: Drifting along the river of cognition, I pondered the mysteries of existence with each passing moment.

10. Sanctuary of Beliefs

Beliefs find refuge in the sanctuary of the mind, where they are nurtured and protected from the storms of doubt and uncertainty.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a sanctuary where beliefs are cherished and safeguarded.

In a Sentence: Within the sanctuary of beliefs, I found solace amidst the chaos of conflicting opinions and ideologies.

11. Workshop of Ideas

The mind can be seen as a bustling workshop of ideas, where thoughts are forged, refined, and brought to life through the fires of creativity.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a workshop where ideas are crafted and developed.

In a Sentence: In the workshop of ideas, I tinkered with concepts until they emerged as fully formed creations.

12. Hive of Activity

Activity buzzes within the hive of the mind, with thoughts and impulses swirling like industrious bees in a collective pursuit of productivity.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a hive where activity and productivity abound.

In a Sentence: Amidst the hive of activity, my mind hummed with energy as I tackled one task after another.

13. Spectrum of Perceptions

Perceptions span a vast spectrum within the mind, shaping our understanding of the world through a kaleidoscope of perspectives and experiences.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a spectrum where perceptions range across various viewpoints.

In a Sentence: Exploring the spectrum of perceptions, I gained insight into the diverse ways people interpret the same events.

14. Symphony of Thoughts

Thoughts harmonize and clash like instruments in a symphony within the mind, creating a rich tapestry of melodies and rhythms.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a symphony where thoughts blend and clash to create a complex composition.

In a Sentence: Lost in the symphony of thoughts, I marveled at the intricate interplay of ideas and emotions.

15. Labyrinth of Intellect

The labyrinth of intellect twists and turns through the corridors of the mind, challenging us to navigate its complexities with logic and reason.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a labyrinth where intellect is tested and explored.

In a Sentence: Venturing into the labyrinth of intellect, I sought answers amidst the maze of complex ideas and theories.

16. Garden of Reflections

Reflections bloom like flowers in the garden of the mind, offering moments of introspection and self-discovery amidst the tranquility of contemplation.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a garden where reflections flourish, fostering moments of introspection.

In a Sentence: Amidst the garden of reflections, I found clarity and understanding as I pondered the mysteries of existence.

17. Forge of Creativity

Creativity is forged in the fiery depths of the mind’s forge, where ideas are shaped and molded into works of art and innovation.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a forge where creativity is crafted and honed.

In a Sentence: Within the forge of creativity, I forged ideas into reality with the hammer blows of imagination.

18. Vault of Wisdom

Wisdom is stored within the vault of the mind, where experiences and insights are safeguarded as invaluable treasures.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a vault where wisdom is stored and protected.

In a Sentence: Delving into the vault of wisdom, I unearthed nuggets of truth amidst the wealth of knowledge accumulated over a lifetime.

19. Circus of Thoughts

Thoughts whirl and twirl like performers in a circus within the mind, captivating our attention with their acrobatics and antics.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a circus where thoughts perform in a whirlwind of activity.

In a Sentence: Amidst the circus of thoughts, I marveled at the spectacle of ideas and musings vying for attention.

20. Laboratory of the Psyche

The laboratory of the psyche is a realm of experimentation and exploration, where the inner workings of the mind are scrutinized and analyzed.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a laboratory where psychological processes are studied and understood.

In a Sentence: Within the laboratory of the psyche, I conducted experiments to unravel the mysteries of human behavior and cognition.

21. Gallery of Impressions

Impressions adorn the walls of the mind’s gallery, capturing moments and emotions in vivid detail like cherished works of art.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a gallery where impressions are displayed and preserved.

In a Sentence: Walking through the gallery of impressions, I was moved by the beauty and poignancy of memories etched in my mind.

22. Garden of Neurons

Neurons bloom like flowers in the garden of the mind, forming intricate networks of connections that shape our thoughts and behaviors.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a garden where neurons grow and intertwine.

In a Sentence: Exploring the garden of neurons, I marveled at the complexity of neural pathways that govern our every thought and action.

23. Network of Associations

Associations weave a web of connections within the mind, linking ideas and memories in a tapestry of interrelated concepts.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a network where associations connect various thoughts and memories.

In a Sentence: Navigating the network of associations, I traced connections between seemingly unrelated ideas, uncovering hidden patterns and meanings.

24. Tower of Contemplation

The tower of contemplation rises above the landscape of the mind, offering a vantage point from which to survey the vast expanse of thoughts and emotions below.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a tower where contemplation and reflection take place.

In a Sentence: From the tower of contemplation, I gazed upon the panorama of my thoughts with a sense of clarity and perspective.

25. Forest of Subconsciousness

The subconscious mind is a dense forest shrouded in mystery, where hidden desires and fears lurk amidst the shadows of our unconscious thoughts.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a forest where subconscious thoughts and emotions reside.

In a Sentence: Venturing into the forest of subconsciousness, I confronted the fears and desires that lay buried beneath the surface of my consciousness.

26. Chamber of Introspection

Introspection is conducted within the chamber of the mind, where we delve deep into the recesses of our thoughts and emotions in search of self-understanding.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a chamber where introspection and self-reflection take place.

In a Sentence: Within the chamber of introspection, I examined my thoughts and feelings with a keen eye, seeking to unravel the mysteries of my innermost self.

27. Playground of Ideas

Ideas frolic and play within the playground of the mind, where creativity knows no bounds and imagination takes flight.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a playground where ideas are explored and expressed freely.

In a Sentence: In the playground of ideas, I reveled in the joy of creative expression, uninhibited by the constraints of reality.

28. Universe of Cognition

Cognition encompasses the vast universe of the mind, where thoughts and perceptions traverse the endless expanse of human consciousness.

Meaning: The mind is likened to a universe where cognition unfolds in all its complexity.

In a Sentence: Exploring the universe of cognition, I marveled at the infinite possibilities and intricacies of the human mind.

29. Sanctuary of Consciousness

Consciousness is a sacred sanctuary within the mind, where awareness and perception illuminate the darkness of ignorance and unconsciousness.

Meaning: The mind is depicted as a sanctuary where consciousness resides.

In a Sentence: Within the sanctuary of consciousness, I found enlightenment amidst the chaos of the world around me.

30. Symphony of Synapses

Synapses conduct a symphony of signals within the mind, orchestrating the intricate dance of neural communication that underlies our thoughts and behaviors.

Meaning: The mind is compared to a symphony where synapses orchestrate the flow of information.

In a Sentence: Amidst the symphony of synapses, I marveled at the complexity of neural networks that govern our every thought and action.

Here are 10 quiz questions based on the metaphors from the article:

• A. A playground
• B. A garden
• C. A library
• D. A circus
• Correct Answer: C. A library
• A. Theater of Dreams
• B. Battlefield of Emotions
• C. Garden of Thoughts
• D. Symphony of Thoughts
• Correct Answer: B. Battlefield of Emotions
• A. Thoughts
• C. Emotions
• Correct Answer: A. Thoughts
• A. The mind to a palace
• B. The mind to a library
• C. The mind to a garden
• D. The mind to a theater
• Correct Answer: A. The mind to a palace
• A. Workshop of Ideas
• B. Circus of Thoughts
• C. Tower of Contemplation
• D. Ocean of Consciousness
• Correct Answer: A. Workshop of Ideas
• A. A garden
• B. A library
• C. An ocean
• Correct Answer: A. A garden
• A. Emotions
• B. Thoughts
• C. Memories
• Correct Answer: B. Thoughts
• A. Circus of Thoughts
• B. Symphony of Synapses
• C. Forest of Subconsciousness
• D. Network of Associations
• Correct Answer: C. Forest of Subconsciousness
• A. The mind to a sanctuary
• B. The mind to a hive
• C. The mind to a maze
• D. The mind to a garden
• Correct Answer: A. The mind to a sanctuary
• A. A canvas
• C. A forest
• D. A palace
• Correct Answer: A. A canvas

Metaphors offer us a window into the intricate workings of the human mind, allowing us to grasp its complexities through familiar and tangible comparisons.

By exploring the various metaphors for the mind, we gain deeper insights into the boundless depths of human cognition, where thoughts, emotions, and dreams converge in a symphony of consciousness.

Cite this entry:

Phrasesdirectory.com. “ ,” Retrieved from Phrases Directory – Accessed

About the author

Dr. Julia Rossi

Dr. Julia Rossi , a luminary in the field of linguistics, earned her Ph.D. with a groundbreaking thesis that delved into the cultural and historical dimensions of idioms, metaphors, and similes. Her work, spanning decades, has brought to light the dynamic nature of idiomatic expressions, illustrating how they serve as cultural artifacts, revealing the collective consciousness of a society. Rossi’s publications, widely acclaimed in academic circles, have not only expanded our understanding of idioms but have also paved the way for a more nuanced appreciation of cross-cultural communication.

Word Of The Day

Ephemeral (adjective) :

• Lasting for a very short time; short-lived; transitory.
• Existing only briefly; temporary; fleeting.

Example sentence: “The beauty of the cherry blossoms is ephemeral, lasting only a few weeks each spring.”

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Frontiers for Young Minds

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The Wandering Mind: How the Brain Allows Us to Mentally Wander Off to Another Time and Place

A unique human characteristic is our ability to mind wander—these are periods of time when our attention drifts away from the task-at-hand to focus on thoughts that are unrelated to the task. Mind wandering has some benefits, such as increased creativity, but it also has some negative consequences, such as mistakes in the task we are supposed to be performing. Interestingly, we spend up to half of our waking hours mind wandering. How does the brain help us accomplish that? Research suggests that when we mind wander, our responses to information from the external world around us are disrupted. In other words, our brain’s resources are shifted away from processing information from the external environment and redirected to our internal world, which allows us to mentally wander off to another time and place. Even though we pay less attention to the external world during mind wandering, our ability to detect unexpected events in our surrounding environment is preserved. This suggests that we are quite clever about what we ignore or pay attention to in the external environment, even when we mind wander.

How Do Scientists Define Mind Wandering?

Imagine this: you are sitting in a classroom on a sunny day as your science teacher enthusiastically tells you what our brain is capable of doing. Initially, you pay close attention to what the teacher is saying. But the sound of the words coming out of her mouth gradually fade away as you notice your stomach growling and you begin to think about that delicious ice cream you had last night. Have you ever caught yourself mind wandering in similar situations, where your eyes are fixed on your teacher, friends, or parents, but your mind has secretly wandered off to another time and place? You may be recalling the last sports game you watched, or fantasizing about going to the new amusement park this upcoming weekend, or humming your favorite tune that you just cannot get out of your head. This experience is what scientists call mind wandering, which is a period of time when we are focused on things that are not related to the ongoing task or what is actually going on around us (as shown in Figure 1 ).

• Figure 1 - Real-world example of on-task and mind wandering states among students in a classroom.
• In a science class in which the teacher asks a question about the brain, some students may be focused on what is being taught, while others may be thinking about yesterday’s basketball tournament, humming their favorite tune, or thinking about getting ice cream after school. The students thinking about the brain during class would be considered to be “on task,” while students thinking about things unrelated to the brain would be considered to be “mind wandering.”

Our Tendency to Mind Wander

Humans on average spend up to half of their waking hours mind wandering. There are differences across individuals in their tendency to mind wander and many factors that affect this tendency. For instance, older adults on average tend to mind wander less than younger adults. Also, individuals who are often sad or worried mind wander more frequently compared with individuals who are happy and have nothing to worry about. We also mind wander more when we perform tasks that we are used to doing, compared with when we perform novel and challenging tasks. There are also different types of mind wandering. For example, we may sometimes mind wander on purpose when we are bored with what we are currently doing. Other times, our mind accidentally wanders off without us noticing.

What are the Pros and Cons of Mind Wandering?

Since we spend so much time mind wandering, does this mean that mind wandering is good for us or not? There are certainly benefits to mind wandering. For example, one of the things the mind does when it wanders is to make plans about the future. In fact, we are more likely to make plans when we mind wander than we are to fantasize about unrealistic situations. Planning ahead is a good use of time as it allows us to efficiently carry out our day-to-day tasks, such as finishing homework, practicing soccer, and preparing for a performance. When mind wandering, we are also likely to reflect upon ourselves. This process of thinking about how we think, behave, and interact with others around us is a crucial part of our self-identity. Mind wandering has also been tied to creative problem-solving. There are times when we get stuck on a challenging math problem or feel uninspired to paint or make music, and research suggests that taking a break from thinking about these problems and letting the mind wander off to another topic may eventually lead to an “aha” moment, in which we come up with a creative solution or idea.

However, mind wandering can also have negative outcomes. For example, mind wandering in class means you miss out on what is being taught, and mind wandering while doing your homework may result in mistakes. Taken to an extreme, people who are diagnosed with depression constantly engage in their own thoughts about their problems or other negative experiences. In contrast, individuals diagnosed with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder who continually change their focus of attention may have a hard time completing a task. Taken together, whether mind wandering is good or bad depends on when we mind wander and what we mind wander about [ 1 ].

Scientific Measures of Mind Wandering

If you were to conduct an experiment, how would you measure mind wandering? Scientists have come up with several methods, one of which is called experience sampling . As research volunteers are doing a computer task in a laboratory, or as they are doing chores in their day-to-day lives, they are asked at random intervals to report their attention state. That is, they have to stop what they are doing and ask themselves what they were thinking about in the moment: “Was I on-task?” (that is, was I paying attention to the task-at-hand) or “Was I mind wandering?” (that is, did my mind wander off to another time and place). Therefore, experience sampling samples the volunteer’s in-the-moment experience, allowing scientists to understand how frequently people mind wander and how mind wandering affects the way people interact with their environments.

Scientists also study mind wandering by recording electroencephalogram (EEG) , a test that measures the electrical activity of the brain. This electrical activity, which looks like wavy lines during an EEG recording (see Figure 2 , Step 2), is observed in all parts of the brain and is present throughout the day, even when we are asleep. Measurements of the brain’s electrical activity help scientists understand how the brain allows us to think, speak, move, and do all the fun and creative and challenging things that we do! In order to record EEG, scientists place special sensors called electrodes on the scalp of a volunteer ( Figure 2 , Step 1), with each electrode recording activity of numerous neurons (brain cells) in the area under the electrode ( Figure 2 , Step 2). Scientists then examine the brain’s activity in response to images (such as a picture of a basketball in Figure 2 ) or sounds presented to the volunteer. The scientists present the same sound or picture to the volunteer multiple times and take the average of the brain’s activity in response to the image or sound, because that method results in a better EEG signal. The averaged brain activity produces something called an event-related potential (ERP) waveform that contains several high and low points, called peaks and troughs ( Figure 2 , Step 3), which represent the brain’s response to the image or sound over time. Some commonly seen peaks and troughs are assigned specific names as ERP components. For instance, a peak that occurs around 300 ms (only 3/10 of a second!) following the presentation of a picture or a sound is often called the P300 ERP component. Based on decades of research, scientists have shown that these ERP components reflect our brain’s response to events we see or hear. The size of the ERP components (measured in voltage) reflects how strong the response is, while the timing of these ERP components (measured in milliseconds) reflects the timing of the response. Now, PAUSE! I would like you to ask yourself, “Was I paying full attention to the previous sentence just now, or was I thinking about something else?” This is an example of experience sampling. And as you may realize now, when we are asked about our current attention state, we can quite accurately report it.

• Figure 2 - Recording electroencephalogram (EEG) in humans.
• Step 1. To record EEG, electrodes are attached to a cap that is placed on the scalp of a research volunteer. Step 2. Each wavy line represents the amount of activity recorded by each electrode. Research volunteers are usually presented with some images (e.g., a basketball) or sounds a number of times while their brain activity is being recorded. Step 3. Scientists calculate the average EEG activity across multiple presentations of the same picture/sound. This results in an Event-Related Potential (ERP) waveform, where time (in milliseconds) is plotted on the x-axis and the voltage (in microvolts, indicating the size of the ERP components) is plotted on the y-axis. On the x-axis, 0 indicates the time at which the stimulus (e.g., image of a basketball) was presented. The ERP waveforms contain multiple high and low points, called peaks and troughs. Some of the peaks and troughs are given specific labels. For example, the peak that occurs around 300 ms after an image is presented is often called the P300 ERP component.

What Happens to Our Interaction with the Environment When We Mind Wander?

Scientists have proposed an idea—called the “Decoupling Hypothesis”—stating that during mind wandering, the brain’s resources are shifted away from our surrounding environment and are redirected to our internal world in order to support our thoughts [ 2 ]. This hypothesis assumes that the brain has a certain amount of resources, which means that once mind wandering has used the resources it needs to focus on our thoughts, only a limited amount of brain resources remains for responding to our surrounding environment.

To test this hypothesis, scientists combined experience sampling with EEG to explore how mind wandering affects our interaction with the environment. One of the first studies to test this hypothesis asked research volunteers to categorize a series of images by responding whenever they saw rare targets (e.g., images of soccer balls) among a whole bunch of non-targets (e.g., images of basketballs). Throughout the task, EEG was recorded from the volunteers, and they were also asked at random times to report their attention state as “on task” or “mind wandering.” Based on their EEGs and experience sampling reports, scientists found that the brain’s response to the non-targets was reduced during periods of mind wandering compared with periods of being on task [ 3 ]. This can be seen in Figure 3A , where there is a smaller P300 ERP component during mind wandering (the green lines) compared with the P300 ERP component during the time when the volunteer was on task (the gray line). The data suggest that the brain’s response to events happening in our environment is disrupted when we engage in mind wandering.

• Figure 3 - Mind wandering affects our ability to process events in the environment.
• A. The brain’s processing of external events (e.g., images of basketballs and soccer balls) is reduced during periods of mind wandering. This is indicated by the smaller P300 ERP component during mind wandering (green lines) compared with on-task (gray line). The ERP waveform was recorded from the electrode site circled in red, which is located on the back of the head. B. Mind wandering impairs our ability to monitor our own performance, making it more likely that we will make mistakes. This is shown by the smaller feedback error-related negativity ERP component, a trough occurring around 250 ms, for mind wandering (green line) compared with on-task (gray line). The ERP waveform was recorded from the electrode site circled in red, which is located near the front of the head.

Have you ever noticed that if your mind wanders while you are doing homework, you are more likely to make mistakes? Many experiments have also shown that this happens! This led some scientists to question what is happening in the brain when we make mistakes. They specifically measured something called the feedback error-related negativity ERP component, which gives scientists an idea of how closely we are monitoring the accuracy of our responses when we perform a task. The scientists found that the feedback error-related negativity ERP component was reduced during mind wandering compared with on-task periods, as shown in Figure 3B . This suggests that mind wandering negatively affects our ability to monitor our performance and adjust our behavior, making it more likely that we will make mistakes [ 4 ]. All of these studies provide evidence supporting the hypothesis that when the mind wanders, our responses to what is going on in the environment around us are disrupted.

Does Mind Wandering Impair all Responses to the Environment?

At this point, you may wonder: are all responses to the world around us impaired during mind wandering? This seems unlikely, because we are usually quite capable of responding to the external environment even when we mind wander. For example, even though we may mind wander a lot while walking, most of us rarely bump into things as we walk from place to place. A group of scientists asked the same question and looked specifically at whether we can still pay attention to our environment at some level even when we are mind wandering. To test this question, research volunteers were asked to read a book while they were listening to some tones unrelated to the book. Most of the tones were identical, but among these identical tones was rare and different tone that naturally grabbed the attention of the volunteers. These scientists found that the volunteers paid just as much attention to this rare tone when they were mind wandering compared to when they were on task. In other words, our minds appear to be quite smart about which attention processes to disrupt and which processes to preserve during mind wandering. Under normal circumstances, our minds ignore some of the ordinary events in our environment in order for us to maintain a train of thought. However, when an unexpected event occurs in the environment, one that is potentially dangerous, our brain knows to shift our attention to the external environment so that we can respond to the potentially dangerous event. Imagine walking down the street and thinking about the movie you want to watch this weekend. While doing this, you may not clearly perceive the noise of the car engines or the pedestrians chatting around you. However, if a car suddenly honks loudly, you will hear the honk immediately, which will snap you out of your mind wandering. Therefore, even when the mind is wandering, we are still clever about what we ignore and what we pay attention to in the external environment, allowing us to smartly respond to the unusual, or potentially dangerous, events that may require us to focus our attention back on the external environment.

In summary, the brain appears to support mind wandering by disrupting some of the brain processes that are involved in responding to our surrounding external environment. This ability is important for protecting our thoughts from external distractions and allowing us to fully engage in mind wandering. We are only beginning to understand this mysterious experience of thinking, and scientists are actively researching what goes on in the brain when we mind wander. Increasing our knowledge about mind wandering will help us better understand how to take advantage of its benefits while avoiding the problems linked to mind wandering.

Mind Wandering : ↑ Periods of time when an individual is thinking of something that is unrelated to the task he/she is performing.

Experience Sampling : ↑ A scientific method in which a person is asked to report their experience; that is, whether he or she is paying attention or mind wandering at random intervals in the laboratory setting or in the real world.

Electroenceph-Alogram (EEG—“elec-tro-en-sef-a-lo-gram”) : ↑ Electrical activity of many neurons in the brain that is measured by electrodes placed on the scalp.

Event-Related Potential (ERPs) : ↑ Peaks or troughs in the averaged EEG signal that reflect the brain’s responses to events we see or hear.

P300 : ↑ An ERP component that typically peaks around 300 ms (therefore “300”) after a person sees a picture or hears a sound. It reflects the brain’s processing of the information that is seen or heard. an ERP component that typically peaks around 300 ms (therefore “300”) after a person sees a picture or hears a sound. It reflects the brain’s processing of the information that is seen or heard.

Feedback Error-Related Negativity : ↑ An ERP component that reflects how much a person is monitoring the accuracy of his/her performance.

Conflict of Interest Statement

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.

[1] ↑ Smallwood, J., and Andrews-Hanna, J. 2013. Not all minds that wander are lost: the importance of a balanced perspective on the mind-wandering state. Front. Psychol. 4:441. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00441

[2] ↑ Smallwood, J. 2013. Distinguishing how from why the mind wanders: a process-occurrence framework for self-generated mental activity. Psychol. Bull. 139(2013):519–35. doi:10.1037/a0030010

[3] ↑ Smallwood, J., Beach, E., Schooler, J. W., and Handy, T. C. 2008. Going AWOL in the brain: mind wandering cortical analysis of external events. J. Cogn. Neurosci. 20:458–69. doi:10.1162/jocn.2008.20037

[4] ↑ Kam, J. W. Y., Dao, E., Blinn, P., Krigolson, O. E., Boyd, L. A., and Handy, T. C. 2012. Mind wandering and motor control: off-task thinking disrupts the online adjustment of behavior. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 6:329. doi:10.3389/fnhum.2012.00329

• 41 Quotes About Wandering for Travelers, Thinkers and Flâneurs
• October 14, 2023

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• Killer Quotes

Living a pre-planned, predictable life is a prison sentence for many. If you feel the need escape routine and the idea of exploring new places without a set itinerary sounds appealing to you, then this collection of quotes about wandering is for you. Inspire your wanderlust and set yourself free on a new adventure.

Flâneur Life Team

No one knows the pleasure of wandering quite like a flâneur. Whether you’re aimlessly meandering through new streets or purposely exploring off the beaten path, there’s something inherently satisfying about discovering what lies beyond your comfort zone. And if you’re looking for a bit of inspiration, we’ve got you covered – here are some of our favorite quotes about wandering from famous adventurers and explorers. Bon voyage !

Quotes About Wandering

Real travel requires a maximum of unscheduled wandering, for there is no other way of discovering surprises and marvels, which, as I see it, is the only good reason for not staying at home. Alan Watts

By experience we find out a short way by a long wandering . Roger Ascham

Time is the deepest wilderness in which we wander. Christopher Cokinos

Wandering flushes a glory that fades with arrival. J. A. Baker

Instead of insight, maybe all a man gets is strength to wander for a while. William Least Heat-Moon

I know not how I may seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with Plato

People travel to wonder at the height of the mountains, at the huge waves of the seas, at the long course of the rivers, at the vast compass of the ocean, at the circular motion of the stars, and yet they pass by themselves without wondering. St. Augustine

The wandering photographer sees the same show that everyone else sees. He, however, stops to watch it. Edouard Boubat

Not all those who wander are lost. J.R.R. Tolkien

Wander a whole summer if you can. Time will not be taken from the sum of life.  Instead of shortening, it will definitely lengthen it and make you truly immortal. John Muir

Though we travel the world over to find the beautiful, we must carry it with us, or we find it not. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The mind can wander while still focusing on one task. Herbert Benson

Wandering re-establishes the original harmony which once existed between man and the universe. Anatole France

One’s destination is never a place, but a new way of seeing things. Henry Miller

I’ll never stop wandering. And when the time comes to die, I’ll find the wildest, loneliest, most desolate spot there is. Everett Ruess

Meandering leads to perfection. Lao Tzu

So we follow our wandering paths , and the very darkness acts as our guide and our doubts serve to reassure us. Jean Pierre

It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something. Charles Dickens

We ought to take outdoor walks, to refresh and raise our spirits by deep breathing in the open air. Lucius Annaeus Seneca

We wander for distraction, but we travel for fulfillment. Hilaire Belloc

Above all, do not lose your desire to walk . Every day I walk myself into a state of well-being and walk away from every illness. I have walked myself into my best thoughts, and I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it. Søren Kierkegaard

Improvising musicians are musical travelers, voyagers. There is a freedom to wander the musical landscape. Gary Burton

Take a few minutes of every day to fantasize about how you would wander, travel, or explore if you could. Wayne Dyer

The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes. Marcel Proust

Trees go wandering forth in all directions with every wind, going and coming like ourselves, traveling with us around the sun two million miles a day, and through space heaven knows how fast and far! John Muir

My father considered a walk among the mountains as the equivalent of churchgoing. Aldous Huxley

A world of colors on the palette remaining…wandering…on canvases still emerging. Wassily Kandinsky

Do not allow yourself to lose sight on the way to your future, while wandering in the darkness of the past. Lucas Hunter

Wandering between two worlds, one dead, The other powerless to be born. Matthew Arnold

The sum of the whole is this: walk and be happy, walk and be healthy. Charles Dickens

Me thinks that the moment my legs begin to move, my thoughts begin to flow. Henry David Thoreau

Before, I wandered as a diversion. Now I wander seriously and sit and read as a diversion. Walker Percy

When you have worn out your shoes, the strength of the sole leather has passed into the fibre of your body. I measure your health by the number of shoes and hats and clothes you have worn out. He is the richest man who pays the largest debt to his shoemaker. Ralph Waldo Emerson

The world is vast and meant for wandering. There is always somewhere else to go. Nick Burd

I took a walk in the woods and came out taller than the trees. Henry David Thoreau

Walking is also an ambulation of mind. Gretel Ehrlich

But in every walk with nature one receives far more than he seeks. John Muir

Early one morning, any morning, we can set out, with the least possible baggage, and discover the world. Thomas Clark

I can just let my curiosity wander unleashed. James C. Collins

Walking is man’s best medicine. Hippocrates

Perhaps the truth depends on a walk around the lake. Wallace Stevens

A Final Word

So there you have it! We hope this collection of quotes about wandering have shown you how travel is a great way of discovering your way. And while we can all agree it’s important to have goals at time, sometimes you just need to wander for awhile before you figure out what those are! If that sounds like something you could use right now, here are some of the best cities in the world to wander around on foot .

What’s your favorite quote about wandering? Leave a comment below!

If you enjoyed this, you might also like these related quote collections:

• Quotes About Experimentation
• Quotes About Walking
• Quotes About the Subconscious Mind
• Quotes About Life Direction
• Quotes About Exploration

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25 Metaphors for Emotions

Emotions are the vibrant colors that paint the canvas of our lives, the driving forces behind our actions and reactions. They are as diverse as the people who experience them, and often, they’re so complex that words alone can’t capture their essence.

That’s where metaphors come in handy. Metaphors allow us to express and understand emotions by comparing them to familiar, tangible experiences.

In this article, we’ll embark on a journey through the fascinating world of metaphors for emotions, exploring how these linguistic tools help us make sense of our inner feelings.

Metaphors for Emotions

1. “a storm of emotions”.

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be intense and turbulent, like a storm.

In a Sentence: When she heard the news of her promotion, a storm of emotions raged within her, mixing excitement, anxiety, and disbelief.

2. “A Rollercoaster of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor compares emotions to the ups and downs of a rollercoaster ride.

In a Sentence: Going through a breakup can feel like riding a never-ending rollercoaster of emotions, with highs of nostalgia and lows of heartache.

3. “A Boiling Pot”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can build up and become overwhelming, like a pot of water that is about to boil over.

In a Sentence: As the pressure of deadlines mounted, his frustration simmered like a boiling pot, ready to explode at any moment.

4. “A Cool Head”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that someone who is able to remain calm and collected in the face of strong emotions is able to keep a “cool head.”

In a Sentence: Despite the heated argument, she managed to keep a cool head and find a peaceful solution.

5. “A Heart of Stone”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that someone who is emotionally distant or unresponsive is like a heart made of stone.

In a Sentence: After the betrayal, he seemed to have developed a heart of stone, no longer capable of trusting anyone.

6. “A Heart on Your Sleeve”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that someone who is very open and expressive with their emotions wears their heart on their sleeve.

In a Sentence: Unlike his reserved demeanor, she always wore her heart on her sleeve, never hiding her true feelings.

7. “A Broken Heart”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that intense emotions, such as heartbreak or grief, can feel like a physical injury or wound.

In a Sentence: After the loss of his beloved pet, he felt as if he carried a broken heart, aching with each memory.

8. “Butterflies in Your Stomach”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that feelings of nervousness or excitement can create a fluttery, anxious sensation in the stomach.

In a Sentence: Before her first public speaking engagement, she had so many butterflies in her stomach that she wondered if she’d be able to speak at all.

9. “A Fire in the Belly”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that strong emotions, such as determination or passion, can feel like a burning flame in the belly.

In a Sentence: With a fire in her belly, she pursued her dreams relentlessly, never letting setbacks extinguish her determination.

10. “A Weight on Your Shoulders”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that negative emotions, such as sadness or anxiety, can feel like a physical burden that weighs you down.

In a Sentence: The financial struggles felt like a heavy weight on his shoulders, making each step forward seem arduous.

11. “A Cloud Over Your Head”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that negative emotions, such as sadness or depression, can feel like a dark cloud that follows you around.

In a Sentence: Ever since the breakup, a perpetual cloud seemed to hang over her head, casting a shadow on her every moment.

12. “Seeing Red”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that feelings of anger or frustration can cause someone to see the world through a red, distorted lens.

In a Sentence: When he heard the false accusations, he couldn’t help but see red, his anger blinding him to reason.

13. “A Sea of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be vast and varied, like a sea.

In a Sentence: Graduation day brought forth a sea of emotions, as students celebrated the end of one chapter and the beginning of another.

14. “A Garden of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be diverse and change over time, like a garden that grows and changes with the seasons.

In a Sentence: Life’s experiences nurture a garden of emotions within us, with each season bringing forth different feelings and perspectives.

15. “A Tapestry of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be interwoven and complex, like a tapestry with many different threads.

In a Sentence: Human connections are like a tapestry of emotions, with each relationship adding its unique thread to the fabric of our lives.

16. “A Flood of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be overwhelming and overpowering, like a flood.

In a Sentence: As he stood at the altar, a flood of emotions surged through him, leaving him teary-eyed and speechless.

17. “A Well of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be deep and hidden, like a well.

In a Sentence: Underneath his calm exterior lay a well of emotions that he rarely shared with anyone, not even his closest friends.

18. “An Iceberg of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be hidden or misunderstood, like an iceberg with most of its mass hidden beneath the surface.

In a Sentence: She appeared composed, but beneath the surface, her emotions were as complex as an iceberg, with depths unknown to others.

19. “A Box of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be contained or controlled, like a box that holds objects inside.

In a Sentence: He locked away his feelings in a metaphorical box, fearing that they would overwhelm him if he let them out.

20. “A Pendulum of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can swing back and forth, like a pendulum.

In a Sentence: In the face of uncertainty, her emotions swung like a pendulum between hope and despair.

21. “A Kaleidoscope of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be colorful and varied, like a kaleidoscope with its changing patterns.

In a Sentence: Traveling to new places often brings a kaleidoscope of emotions, from excitement to wonder, all within a single journey.

22. “A Maze of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be confusing and difficult to navigate, like a maze.

In a Sentence: Trying to understand the intricacies of human relationships can sometimes feel like wandering through a complex maze of emotions.

23. “A Mirror of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can reflect or reveal something about a person, like a mirror that shows a person’s appearance.

In a Sentence: Her art was a mirror of her emotions, reflecting the depths of her soul with every stroke of the brush.

24. “A Mask of Emotions”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can be hidden or disguised, like a mask that covers the face.

In a Sentence: Behind his cheerful mask, he concealed a turbulent sea of emotions that he was reluctant to share.

25. “A Window into the Soul”

Meaning: This metaphor suggests that emotions can reveal something about a person’s inner being, like a window that allows someone to see inside a room.

In a Sentence: Her songs provided a window into her soul, allowing listeners to glimpse the depths of her experiences and emotions.

Metaphors for emotions serve as bridges between the intangible world of feelings and our everyday experiences. They help us convey the depth, complexity, and diversity of human emotions, making it easier for us to connect, empathize, and navigate the rollercoaster of life.

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Is Your Mind Wandering?

What's held in attention has the power to change your brain..

Posted June 19, 2017

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Is your mind wandering ?

The Practice: Pay attention.

Moment to moment, the flows of thoughts and feelings, sensations and desires, and conscious and unconscious processes sculpt your nervous system like water gradually carving furrows and eventually gullies on a hillside. Your brain is continually changing its structure. The only question is: Is it for better or worse?

In particular, because of what's called " experience-dependent neuroplasticity ," whatever you hold in attention has a special power to change your brain. Attention is like a combination spotlight and vacuum cleaner: it illuminates what it rests upon and then sucks it into your brain - and your self.

Therefore, controlling your attention - becoming more able to place it where you want it and keep it there, and more able to pull it away from what's bothersome or pointless (such as looping again and again through anxious preoccupations, mental grumbling, or self-criticism) - is the foundation of changing your brain, and thus your life, for the better. As the great psychologist, William James, wrote over a century ago: "The education of attention would be the education par excellence ."

But to gain better control of attention - to become more mindful and more able to concentrate - we need to overcome a few challenges. In order to survive, our ancestors evolved to be stimulation-hungry and easily distracted, continually scanning their interior and their environment for opportunities and threats, carrots and sticks. There is also a natural range of temperament, from focused and cautious "turtles" to distractible and adventuresome "jackrabbits." Upsetting experiences - especially traumatic ones - train the brain to be vigilant, with attention skittering from one thing to another. And modern culture makes us accustomed to an intense incoming fire hose of stimuli, so anything less - like the sensations of simply breathing - can feel unrewarding, boring , or frustrating.

To overcome these challenges, it's useful to cultivate some neural factors of attention - in effect, getting your brain on your side to help you get a better grip on this spotlight/vacuum cleaner.

You can use one or more of the seven factors below at the start of any deliberate focusing of attention - from keeping your head in a dull business meeting to contemplative practices such as meditation or prayer - and then let them move to the background as you shift into whatever the activity is. You can also draw upon one or more during the activity if your attention is flagging. They are listed in an order that makes sense to me, but you can vary the sequence. (There's more information about attention, mindfulness , concentration, and contemplative absorption in Buddha's Brain .)

Here we go.

• Set the intention to sustain your attention, to be mindful. You can do this both top-down, by giving yourself a gentle instruction to be attentive, and bottom-up, by opening to the sense in your body of what mindfulness feels like.
• Relax. For example, take several exhalations that are twice as long as your inhalations. This stimulates the calming, centering parasympathetic nervous system and settles down the fight-or-flight stress -response sympathetic nervous system that jiggles the spotlight of attention this way and that, looking for carrots and sticks.
• Without straining at it, think of things that help you feel cared about - that you matter to someone, that you belong in a relationship or group, that you are seen and appreciated, or even cherished and loved. It's OK if the relationship isn't perfect, or that you bring to mind people from the past, or pets , or spiritual beings. You could also get a sense of your own goodwill for others, your own compassion, kindness, and love. Warming up the heart in this way helps you feel protected, and it brings a rewarding juiciness to the moment - which support #4 and #5 below.
• Think of things that help you feel safer, and thus more able to rest attention on your activities, rather than vigilantly scanning. Notice that you are likely in a relatively safe setting, with resources inside you to cope with whatever life brings. Let go of any unreasonable anxiety , any unnecessary guarding or bracing.
• Gently encourage some positive feelings, even mild or subtle ones. For example, think of something you feel glad about or grateful for; go-to's for me include my kids, Yosemite, and just being alive. Open as you can to an underlying sense of well-being that may nonetheless contain some struggles or pain. The sense of pleasure or reward in positive emotions increases the neurotransmitter, dopamine , which closes a kind of gate in the neural substrates of working memory , thus keeping out any "barbarians," any invasive distractions.
• Get a sense of the body as a whole, its many sensations appearing together each moment in the boundless space of awareness. This sense of things as a unified gestalt, perceived within a large and panoramic perspective, activates networks on the sides of the brain (especially the right - for right-handed people) that support sustained mindfulness. And it de-activates the networks along the midline of the brain that we use when we're lost in thought.
• For 10-20-30 seconds in a row, stay with whatever positive experiences you're having or lessons you're learning. Since "neurons that fire together, wire together," this savoring and registering helps weave the fruits of your attentive efforts into the fabric of your brain and your self.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D. , is a psychologist, Senior Fellow of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley , and New York Times best-selling author. His books are available in 26 languages and include Hardwiring Happiness , Buddha’s Brain , J ust One Thing , and Mother Nurture . He edits the Wise Brain Bulletin and has numerous audio programs. A summa cum laude graduate of UCLA and founder of the Wellspring Institute for Neuroscience and Contemplative Wisdom , he’s been an invited speaker at NASA, Oxford, Stanford, Harvard, and other major universities, and taught in meditation centers worldwide. His work has been featured on the BBC, CBS, and NPR, and he offers the free Just One Thing newsletter with over 120,000 subscribers, plus the online Foundations of Well-Being program in positive neuroplasticity that anyone with financial need can do for free.

Rick Hanson, Ph.D. , is a senior fellow of the Greater Good Center at UC Berkeley.

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Meditation and the wandering mind: a theoretical framework of underlying neurocognitive mechanisms

Tracy brandmeyer.

1 Osher Center for Integrative Medicine, School of Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, 94115, USA

2 Centre de Recherche Cerveau et Cognition (CerCo), Université Paul Sabatier, Toulouse, France

3 CNRS, UMR 5549, Toulouse, France

Arnaud Delorme

4 Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience, Institute of Neural Computation (INC), University of California, San Diego, La Jolla 92093-0559, USA

During the practice of meditation, the occurrence of self-generated and spontaneous thought and the tendency of the mind to wander away from the intended goal of meditation is ubiquitous, and comprises one of the fundamental teachings of meditation: a heightened awareness of where our attention is placed, and an awareness of the contents of our mind. Mind-wandering in the context of meditation provides individuals a unique and intimate opportunity to closely examine the nature of the wandering mind, cultivating an awareness of ongoing thought patterns while simultaneously cultivating equanimity (evenness of temper or disposition) and compassion towards the content of thoughts, interpretations, and bodily sensations. In this review we provide a theoretical framework highlighting the neurocognitive mechanisms by which contemplative practices influence the neural and phenomenological processes underlying spontaneous thought. Our theoretical model focuses on several converging mechanisms: the role of meta-awareness in facilitating an increased moment to moment awareness of spontaneous thought processes, the effects of meditation practice on key structures underlying both the top-down cognitive processes and bottom-up sensory processes implicated in attention and emotion regulation, and the influence of contemplative practice on the neural substrates underlying perception and perceptual decoupling.

Introduction

Over last few decades we have witnessed an exponential rise of scientific interest and research on the effects of meditation practices and mindfulness-based interventions on brain structure and function ( Fox et al., 2014 ; Lazar et al., 2005 ), behavior ( Flook, Goldberg, Pinger, & Davidson, 2015 ; Malouf, Youman, Stuewig, Witt, & Tangney, 2017 ; Singh, Lancioni, Wahler, Winton, & Singh, 2008 ), genetic expression ( Epel et al., 2013 ; Ornish et al., 2013 ), medical outcomes ( Morone, Greco, & Weiner, 2008 ; Rosenzweig et al., 2010 ), clinical outcomes ( Goyal et al., 2014 ), military performance ( Carter & Carter III, 2016 ), professional performance ( McConville, McAleer, & Hahne, 2017 ) and more. Accumulating research findings provide compelling evidence that mind-body practices such as meditation are associated with improvements in cognitive and affective processes ( Tang, Hölzel, & Posner, 2015 ). Meditation practices aim to generate a dispositional quality refered to as mindfulness, which is considered to be a self-regulated attentional state focused on present-moment experience, emphasizing the features of curiosity, openness, and acceptance ( Dahl, Lutz, & Davidson, 2015 ; Kabat-Zinn, 2003 ). While a majority of meditation practices aim to generate mindfulness through techniques that cultivate attentional clarity and stability ( Wallace, 1999 ), regulate emotional responses to the content of our thoughts and experiences ( Teper, Segal, & Inzlicht, 2013 ), and cultivate compassion for oneself and others ( Hofmann, Grossman, & Hinton, 2011 ), the precise definition and translation of the term mindfulness (Pali: sati or Sanskrit: smrti) is currently a heavily debated topic among Buddhist scholars and scientists (Kirk Warren Brown & Ryan, 2004 ; Fox et al., 2014 ). Given that 33.2% of U.S. adults report the use of mindfulness, meditation, or some form of complementary health approach or intervention ( Okoro, Zhao, Li, & Balluz, 2012 ), there is an increasing need for scientific research that sets forth clear terminology and constructs, elucidates the specific mechanisms by which meditation and mindfulness based practices and interventions exert their influence, and provides context as to how they may be optimally tailored to meet individual needs.

In parallel with the rise in popularity of contemplative science research (as well as the revival of methodologies that study the phenomenology of internal experience), the independent study of self-generated thought and the underlying psychological and neural mechanisms has become a key aim of cognitive neuroscientific research in recent years ( Christoff, Irving, Fox, Spreng, & Andrews-Hanna, 2016 ; Fox et al., 2018 ). Self-generated thought constitutes a diverse and complex class of cognition which generally refers to mental content that occurs largely independent of the external environment, forming a stream of thoughts that can include memories, future plans, daydreams and fantasies, mental imagery, simulated social interactions, rumination, dreams, and more ( Christoff et al., 2016 ). Like mindfulness, the scientific definition of self-generated thought and its corresponding phenomenology have been a recent subject of debate, with refinements in the categorical delineations between various forms of self-generated thought evolving alongside accumulating neuroimaging data. A recently proposed ‘state space’ framework developed by Christoff et al., 2016 highlights how both deliberate (i.e., intentional, top-down) and automatic (i.e., unconscious, bottom-up) constraints influence the content of self-generated thought ( Fig. 1 ). According to this framework, self-generated thoughts include spontaneous (unconstrained and unintentional) forms of cognition like dreaming, mind-wandering, and creative thinking ( Baird et al., 2012 ; Schooler et al., 2014 ), but also include forms of cognition such as rumination, obsessive thinking, and other habitual or automatically constrained patterns of thought ( Mrazek, Smallwood, & Schooler, 2012 ; Unsworth & McMillan, 2013 ). Denoted by their independence from external stimuli, spontaneous thought, a term commonly interchanged with the broader term mind-wandering in the scientific literature and throughout this review ( Andrews-Hanna, Irving, Fox, Spreng, & Christoff, 2017 ), can be understood as a mental state or sequence of mental states that arise relatively freely due to an absence of strong constraints on the contents of each state, and on the transitions from one mental state to another, lacking strong deliberate control ( Christoff et al., 2016 ). General estimates suggest that individuals engage in some form of self-generated thought approximately 30–50% of waking hours ( Killingsworth & Gilbert, 2010 ). Although cognitive psychologists and researchers have been investigating the specific mechanisms underlying spontaneous thought and mind-wandering for several decades now ( Singer, 1966 ), advancements in research methodologies and scientific rigor over the last several years has allowed for a more nuanced neurophenomenological understanding of internal experience ( Andrews-Hanna, Smallwood, & Spreng, 2014 ; Fox et al., 2014 ; Fox, Spreng, Ellamil, Andrews-Hanna, & Christoff, 2015 ; J. Smallwood & Andrews-Hanna, 2013 ).

The states space framework by Christoff et al., (2016) proposes a «conceptual space relating the concept of self-generated thought to deliberate and automatic constraints on cognition. Self-generated thought, by which we mean all those types of thought that are relatively independent of the external environment and immediate sensory inputs, spans a broad cognitive state space. Within this cognitive state space, both deliberate (intentional, top-down) and automatic (unconscious, bottom-up) constraints can influence the content of thought. “Spontaneous” thought is not only self-generated, but is also specifically characterized by relatively weak deliberate and automatic constraints. Rumination and obsessive thought are likewise self-generated and low in deliberate constraints, but are characterized by strong automatic constraints». Used with permission from Christoff et al., (2016) .

These increasingly refined methodological approaches applied within the domains of self-generated thought and contemplative science ( Bockelman, Reinerman-Jones, & Gallagher, 2013 ; Lutz & Thompson, 2003 ; Petitmengin & Lachaux, 2013 ; Thompson, 2008 ) have led to considerable progress in characterizing the first-person phenomenological experience and the associated neural correlates (Stawarczyk, 2018). Although the relevance of studying internal experience has garnered ample attention over the last decade, detailed phenomenological descriptions of the benefits of meditation, as well as the impact of mind-wandering on well-being, have been documented in scholarly Buddhists texts dating back over two thousand years (Santi-deva, 1961). Throughout these ancient writings an emphasis is placed on how attention, when it is not trained, becomes habitually prone to mind-wandering, agitation, and vapidity ( Wallace, 1999 ), a mental state referred to as the ‘monkey mind’ (Gunaratana, 2010). During meditation practice the tendency of the mind to wander away from the intended object is ubiquitous (unless the meditation practice that does not include any specific object or target of attention), and its occurrence can be used as means of cultivating an awareness of its frequency, duration, and content, in order to gain insight into the nature of one’s thoughts and to facilitate the stability of attention. As meditation practice inherently cultivates an ability to monitor cognitive processes related to attention and distraction, meditation practitioners are particularly well suited to report on the phenomenological nature of these mental events, with accumulating evidence suggesting that meditation expertise increases the accuracy and reliability of first-person reporting and interoceptive acuity ( Brandmeyer & Delorme, 2018 ; Fox et al., 2012 ).

Here we aim to further a dialogue regarding the convergence between historically separate lines of research ( Mrazek et al., 2012 ) by providing a broad theoretical framework highlighting the key neurocognitive mechanisms by which contemplative practice may influence the underlying mechanisms mediating spontaneous thought processes. We start by exploring the wealth of literature supporting the relationship between contemplative practice and the manner by which the meditation training inherently cultivates a meta-awareness of the wandering mind. We specifically highlight the influence of contemplative practice on emotional reactivity and the reappraisal of spontaneous thoughts as key mechanisms by which meditation training influences the associated cognitive dynamics. We then delve into a more granular explication of spontaneous thought and mind-wandering, highlighting the intricacies of its phenomenology and its occurrence during contemplative practice. Subsequently we synthesize research findings to illustrate how spontaneous thought processes may be mediated by brain networks functionally and structurally linked to the practice of meditation. We then review the extensive literature on the role of a brain network known as the default network (DMN; Raichle et al., 2001 ) in both mind-wandering and meditation, and explore recent findings implicating distributed brain networks beyond the DMN. Lastly, we present a synthesis of findings highlighting the mechanisms by which meditation modulates attention and sensory perception, and the mechanisms underlying perceptual coupling and decoupling implicated in spontaneous thought processes. Throughout this manuscript we highlight the multidirectional relationship between these key mechanisms, and conclude with a section on perspectives, future directions, and the translational applications of this framework.

Meditation: cultivating meta-awareness and equanimity with the wandering mind

Scientific interest in the neurophysiological bases of meditation has in large part come from our understanding of neuroplasticity and various forms of experience-induced changes that occur in the brain ( Lutz, Slagter, Dunne, & Davidson, 2008 ). The regular practice of meditation has been associated with increased functional connectivity ( Farb et al., 2007 ; Froeliger et al., 2012a ; Garrison, Scheinost, Constable, & Brewer, 2014 ; Garrison et al., 2014 ; Hasenkamp & Barsalou, 2012 ; Taren et al., 2015 ) as well as structural changes in the brain ( Hofmann et al., 2011 ; Hölzel et al., 2011 ; Lazar et al., 2005 ). Lazar and colleagues (2005) were the first to show that the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula, regions heavily implicated in attention monitoring and regulation ( Lutz et al., 2008 ; Menon & Uddin, 2010 ; Tang & Posner, 2009 ), self-generated and spontaneous thought processes ( Christoff, Ream, Geddes, & Gabrieli, 2003 ; Fox et al., 2018 ; Vanhaudenhuyse et al., 2011 ), interoception ( Craig, 2002 ; Khalsa et al., 2008 ), and sensory processing ( Haegens, Osipova, Oostenveld, & Jensen, 2010 ; Kerr et al., 2011 ; Kerr, Sacchet, Lazar, Moore, & Jones, 2013 ), were thicker in experienced meditation practitioners than in age and gender matched controls. They also found that the between-group differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were most pronounced in older practitioners, suggesting that meditation may slow age-related cortical thinning and that the thickness of these two specific areas also correlated with the degree of meditation experience. Lazar and colleagues provided some of the first structural evidence for experience-dependent cortical plasticity associated with meditation practice ( Lazar et al., 2005 ). Additional research implicating the prefrontal cortex during focused attention meditation comes from the findings of Hasenkamp and colleagues (2012). The study highlights the naturalistic cognitive fluctuations between mind-wandering and attentional states derived from the practice of focused attention meditation. Their model proposes key intervals in the cognitive cycle of focused meditation: mind-wandering, awareness of mind-wandering, shifting of attention, and sustained attention and provides a foundation for the theoretical framework we discuss throughout this manuscript ( Hasenkamp, Wilson-Mendenhall, Duncan, & Barsalou, 2012 ). Their findings support and extend theories regarding the central role of mind-wandering and its detection during focused meditation, as well as the cognitive correlates of distributed brain networks.

Despite the central role of mind-wandering and its occurrence during meditation ( Banks, Welhaf, & Srour, 2015 ; Brandmeyer & Delorme, 2018 ; Evans & Segerstrom, 2011 ; Frewen, Evans, Maraj, Dozois, & Partridge, 2008 ; Hasenkamp & Barsalou, 2012 ; Hasenkamp et al., 2012 ; Jazaieri et al., 2014 ; Jha, Morrison, Parker, & Stanley, 2017 ; Morrison, Goolsarran, Rogers, & Jha, 2014 ; Mrazek, Franklin, Phillips, Baird, & Schooler, 2013 ; Stawarczyk & D’Argembeau, 2015 ; Vago & Zeidan, 2016 ; Zanesco et al., 2016 ), the explicit implications of long-term meditation practice on specific characteristics of self-generated thought and mind-wandering, such as the frequency, duration, content, and affect of spontaneous thoughts, with several exceptions ( Banks et al., 2015 ; Evans & Segerstrom, 2011 ; Jazaieri et al., 2016 ; Sanger & Dorjee, 2016 ) have remained relatively unexplored. This is notable given that many of the benefits that come from meditation practice may be due to improved attention regulation and enhanced meta-awareness of ongoing thought processes ( Lutz et al., 2008 ; Lutz et al., 2008 ; Menezes et al., 2013 ). Evidence for this comes from findings that focused attention meditation techniques have been shown to lead to an increased awareness of ongoing experience, emotions, and a decreased frequency with which mind-wandering occurs both during and outside of meditation practice ( Baird, Mrazek, Phillips, & Schooler, 2014 ; Brandmeyer & Delorme, 2018 ; Dorjee, 2016 ; Sanger & Dorjee, 2016 ; Sze, Gyurak, Yuan, & Levenson, 2010 ). Mind-wandering in the context of meditation provides individuals a unique and intimate opportunity to examine the nature of mind-wandering and cultivate awareness of ongoing thought dynamics through the cyclical nature of the meditative process ( Fig.2 ). Many meditation and mindfulness based practices emphasize the practice of non-judgmentally returning one’s attention to the breath or to the focal aim of the meditation practice ( Baer, 2015 ; Davidson, 2010 ; Kabat-Zinn, 2003 ; Vago & Zeidan, 2016 ; Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010 ). Through this training, meditation practitioners learn to develop sustained attentional focus ( Ainsworth, Eddershaw, Meron, Baldwin, & Garner, 2013 ; Lutz et al., 2008 , 2009 ; Tang & Posner, 2009 ), metacognitive awareness of thoughts, feelings, and emotions (Baird, Mrazek, et al., 2014; Brandmeyer & Delorme, 2018 ; Dorjee, 2016 ; Sze et al., 2010 ), while simultaneously cultivating equanimity towards the content of thoughts, judgments, and experience ( Hofmann et al., 2011 ; Jazaieri et al., 2014 ; Weng et al., 2013 ). It is important to emphasize that meditation practices are not intended to lead to a cessation of mind-wandering, but rather a mitigation of its potential deleterious effects and an improved awareness and openness to the passing nature of experience ( Desbordes et al., 2015 ).

The cycle of meditation and mind-wandering during a focused attention meditation practice. The neurocognitive model of how meditation cultivates awareness of mind-wandering by directly engaging the neural substrates implicated in attention regulation, perception, and meta-awareness. This cycle highlights the role of awareness of spontaneous thought and the cyclical observation and detection of involuntary shifts of attention as being at the core of focused meditation practice. Here a meditator begins meditating by 1) the focusing of attention, to then have their 2) attention shift to content of spontaneous thought, until the meditator 3) becomes aware the mind has been off focus, and 3) reorientes attention back to the focus of meditation.

The principal cycle of a focused attention meditation practice is to direct and maintain the focus of attention on a specified object (usually singular) of meditation. That is, one’s attention is completely occupied with focusing on the breath, a mental image, physical sensation, visual object, sound, or mantra ( Travis & Shear, 2010 ; Wahbeh, Sagher, Back, Pundhir, & Travis, 2018 ). In open monitoring meditation practices (OM), the meditator focuses on cultivating awareness and acceptance of what is occurring in the present moment without any pre-determined focal object ( Ainsworth et al., 2013 ; Colzato, Szapora, & Hommel, 2012a ; Kabat-Zinn, 2003 ; Travis & Shear, 2010 ). Additional practices that help to facilitate increased awareness of the occurrence and content of mind-wandering are often added such as labeling emotions, thoughts, and the sensations in the body. These techniques aim to help prevent the meditator from harshly judging themselves once they become aware that the mind has wandered, while providing practitioners with a structured framework for effectively working with their thoughts ( Tang et al., 2015 ).

Equanimity, which can be defined as an even-minded mental state or dispositional tendency toward all experiences or objects, regardless of their origin or their affective valence (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral), is a key and central component of the meditation cycle and mindfulness, as with time, it transforms the way meditators respond and relate to their own internal thoughts and experience ( Davidson, 2010 ; Desbordes et al., 2015 ). These techniques are also thought to facilitate the reappraisal of thoughts as passing phenomenon, while simultaneously associating the direct experience of the physical sensations associated with thoughts with a newly cultivated response of equanimity ( Hölzel et al., 2011 ). Together, we suggest that these processes coalesce in creating a self-regulated closed-loop feedback system for the mind and body, eventually leading to enhanced detection of the early sensory signals associated with introspection and spontaneous thought processes during the meditation cycle ( Fox et al., 2012 ; Kerr et al., 2011 , 2013 ; Sze et al., 2010 ).

Evidence from our previous research implementing an experience sampling paradigm during an hour of focused meditation suggests that long-term meditation practice is associated with a reduced frequency of mind-wandering episodes ( Brandmeyer & Delorme 2018 ). We additionally found a greater correspondence between the self-reports of meditation depth and the simultaneously measured electroencephalography (EEG) activity in long-term meditation practitioners, as compared to intermediate and novice practitioners. While this study demonstrated a direct effect of accrued meditation experience and reduced mind-wandering during meditation, it does not decipher whether this is due to a heightened meta-awareness of when the minds wander (e.g., detecting and redirecting their attention back to the focus of meditation more frequently), or improvements in sustained attention (engaged in longer periods of meditative absorption), or both. Additional research investigating the effects of meditation practice on mind-wandering have also found significant reductions in the number of mind-wandering events following a brief mindful breathing exercise ( Mrazek et al., 2012 ), following one and three months of intensive meditation retreat practice ( Zanesco et al., 2016 ), as well as following several weeks of meditation practice ( Banks et al., 2015 ; Jazaieri et al., 2014 ; Jha et al., 2017 ; Morrison et al., 2014 ; Mrazek et al., 2013 ).

While further research should aim to garner a more granular understanding of these processes, we posit that this increased detection of mind-wandering observed in meditation practitioners most likely reflects a combination of enhanced attentional stability as well as improved meta-awareness, a position evidenced by a wealth of literature supporting the effects of both enhanced attention regulation ( Ainsworth et al., 2013 ; Lutz et al., 2008 ; Menezes et al., 2013 ; Tang & Posner, 2009 ; van den Hurk, Giommi, Gielen, Speckens, & Barendregt, 2010 ) and enhanced metacognitive awareness (Baird, Mrazek, et al., 2014; Fox & Christoff, 2014 ; Sanger & Dorjee, 2016 ) in meditation and mindfulness practitioners.

Variations in tradition and technique are also likely to influence the degree of interplay between the focusing of attention, the aperture of awareness, and the processes underlying the evaluation of thought content and mind-wandering ( Vago & Silbersweig, 2012 ; Vago & Zeidan, 2016 ). In the case of meditation practices in which the intentional generation of thoughts are explicitly employed - such as in loving kindness meditation (LKM) - these practices may require the individual to draw on ideas of the self and others, as well as past memories and conceptual notions of abstract concepts that often involve working with thought content explicitly and in ways that overlap with the processes involved in the generation of spontaneous thoughts. For example, in the case of focused attention, the target skill of focusing attention on the breath directly competes (opposing constructs) with mind-wandering for a limited set of cognitive resources. In the case of LKM, the thoughts specific to the practice become the spotlight of an internally directed self- or other-referential state of attention ( Petersen & Posner, 2012 ). Theoretically, it may be impossible for meditators to practice LKM and have a dual awareness of mind-wandering at the same time because of the cognitive difficulty involved in holding two separate trains of thought simultaneously (although successive thoughts on the order of 1 second may be possible; Delorme & Brandmeyer, 2019 ). This is supported by a recent meta-analysis showing that during FA and OM meditation practices, with the only exception being LKM, large meta-analytic clusters were present in the posterior dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, as well as in the premotor and supplementary motor cortices, all frontal areas that are heavily implicated in higher order cognitive functions such as conflict detection, sustained attention, and emotional regulation ( Amodio & Frith, 2006 ; Fox et al., 2016 ; Hanakawa et al., 2002 ).

A recent study by Fox and colleagues (2014) reported anatomical changes (e.g., increased cortical thickness; Lazar et al., 2005 ) in the frontopolar brain area across all three meditation practices ( Fox et al., 2016 , 2014 ). The frontopolar cortex is an area which has been functionally linked to meta-awareness and metacognitive capacity ( Baird, Smallwood, Gorgolewski, & Margulies, 2013 ; Fleming & Dolan, 2012 ; Fleming, Huijgen, & Dolan, 2012 ; Fleming, Weil, Nagy, Dolan, & Rees, 2010 ; Fox et al., 2015 ; McCaig, Dixon, Keramatian, Liu, & Christoff, 2011 ), as well as in the evaluation of self-generated information ( Christoff et al., 2003 ). As the frontopolar cortex serves as a hub for the frontoparietal control network (FPCN; ( Dixon et al., 2018 ; Ptak, 2012 ; Sauseng, Klimesch, Schabus, & Doppelmayr, 2005 ; Spreng, Sepulcre, Turner, Stevens, & Schacter, 2012 ; Vincent, Kahn, Snyder, Raichle, & Buckner, 2008 ), it may also facilitate the alternation between endogenous and exogenous orientations of attention ( Brandmeyer, 2017 ; Burgess, Dumontheil, & Gilbert, 2007 ; Dixon et al., 2018 ; Ptak, 2012 ; Spreng et al., 2012 ). Thus, while meta-awareness and metacognitive capacity appear to be cognitive features of all the aforementioned forms of contemplative practice, focused attention meditation practice appears to be specifically implicated in higher order cognitive functions, generally involving some focal point to be returned to upon the detection of spontaneous thought processes. For purposes of clarity we focus on research findings from studies investigating the effects of focused attention meditation practices (unless noted), as they are some of the most widely scientifically studied forms of meditation practice and best suited for exploring how contemplative practices may influence this phenomenology and the interplay between these constructs.

The phenomenology of spontaneous thought and the influence of contemplative practice

First-person accounts reveal spontaneous thought to be an incredibly complex phenomenon involving a multitude of time domains, and intellectual and creative content ( Andrews-Hanna, Reidler, Huang, & Buckner, 2010 ; Fox & Christoff, 2014 ; Fox, Nijeboer, Solomonova, Domhoff, & Christoff, 2013 ; Klinger, 2009 , 2013 ; McMillan, Kaufman, & Singer, 2013 ; Seli et al., 2018 ; J. Smallwood, 2013 ). It has been shown that mind-wandering episodes typically involve thinking about oneself, others, remembering the past, and planning for the future ( Buckner, Andrews-Hanna, & Schacter, 2008 ; Gusnard, Raichle, & Raichle, 2001 ; Raichle et al., 2001 ). Across methodologies used to investigate self-generated forms of thought, research in healthy non-clinical populations shows that they are rated as mildly pleasant, positive, and enjoyable, and on average display a mild positive affect bias ( Fox & Christoff, 2018 ). Research also suggests that mind-wandering serves as a mnemonic process, involving a variety of episodic forms of autobiographical memory facilitating an «autonoetic consciousness» unique to the human capacity of the awareness of self ( Tulving & Craik, 2005 ; Vago & Zeidan, 2016 ). Tulving (2005) suggests that it is this autonoetic capacity which provides us the fundamental framework for the advancements in technology, society, our intelligence, and the intrinsic abilities necessary to navigate our complex internal and external environment. The ability to mentally move through time has been referred to as ‘mental time travel’ and has been directly linked to the episodic memory processes thought to generate mental content ( Tulving, 2002 ).

Prospective bias, positive affect, goal-directed planning and creativity

Behavioral studies reveal dynamic interactions between spontaneous thought and executive function, that appear to depend on the difficulty of task the person might be doing ( Smallwood, 2013 ; Smallwood & Andrews-Hanna, 2013 ). These findings support the context regulation hypothesis proposed by Smallwood and Andrews-Hanna (2013) which claims that the costs and benefits of mind-wandering partly depend on an individual’s ability to constrain task unrelated thought in situations that demand their attention ( Andrews-Hanna, Smallwood, & Spreng, 2014 ; Smallwood & Andrews-Hanna, 2013 ). In healthy participants when demands on an individual are particularly low, evidence suggests that attentional resources are redirected towards supporting spontaneous thought processes that are predominately prospective in nature ( Baird, Smallwood, & Schooler, 2011 ; D’Argembeau, Renaud, & Linden, 2011 ; J. Smallwood et al., 2011 ; Stawarczyk & D’Argembeau, 2015 ). In line with these findings, the prospective orientation of mind-wandering has been directly linked with the ‘current concerns’ of an individual ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014 ; Klinger, 2013 ; McVay & Kane, 2010 ) suggesting that mind-wandering may facilitate autobiographical planning and the planning of future goals ( Addis, Knapp, Roberts, & Schacter, 2012 ; Andrews-Hanna, Saxe, & Yarkoni, 2014 ; Baird et al., 2011 ).

These findings are supported by additional research showing that self-oriented thought increases the frequency of future thinking, and that prospective experiences mediate the memory advantage for self-referential information ( Klein, Robertson, Delton, & Lax, 2012 ). Baird and colleagues (2011) implemented a choice reaction task to explore the temporal focus (i.e., past-, present-, or future-oriented) and cognitive orientation (i.e., self-related or goal-directed) of participants’ thoughts and found that participants’ thoughts were predominately future-oriented and self-related. They also found that when thoughts were both self-related and goal-directed they were more frequently future-focused than present or past-focused. These findings provide strong evidence that mind-wandering facilitates goal-directed planning in relation to personal concerns. Furthermore, individuals with improved executive control have been shown to limit their self-generated thought to nondemanding or unimportant contexts ( Barron, Riby, Greer, & Smallwood, 2011 ). In line with these findings, social thoughts pertaining to one’s future have been shown to lead to subsequent positive thoughts, whereas social thoughts pertaining to one’s past precede negative mental content ( Ruby, Smallwood, Engen, & Singer, 2013 ).

Retrospective bias, negative affect, rumination and clinical conditions

Research has shown that mind-wandering focused on the past is directly associated with increased negative affect in laboratory conditions ( Ruby, Smallwood, Engen, & Singer, 2013 ; Smallwood et al., 2011 ; Stawarczyk, Majerus, & D’Argembeau, 2013 ) and in daily life ( Poerio, Totterdell, & Miles, 2013 ). In a seminal study using experience sampling implemented with a mobile phone application, Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) collected data on 2,250 participants and found that mind-wandering was associated with a reduced sense of well-being when mind-wandering events focused on the past. Psychopathological states such as anxiety and depression have also been linked to self-generated experiences that have past-oriented and perseverative features ( Ottaviani & Couyoumdjian, 2013 ; Ottaviani, Shapiro, & Couyoumdjian, 2013 ), while an increased frequency of unaware mind-wandering was also associated with higher levels of depression ( Deng, Li, & Tang, 2014 ). A majority of neurocognitive disorders can be characterized by dysfunctional regulation of both context and content, with alterations in both processes likely to yield devastating consequences on cognitive functioning and well-being ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014 ). Furthermore, the neural mechanisms underlying spontaneous thought processes appear to play a direct role in clinical conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder, depressive rumination, and a host of other mental health disorders where individuals have difficulty regulating the frequency of self-generated spontaneous thoughts ( Andrews-Hanna, Saxe, & Yarkoni, 2014 ; Berman et al., 2011 ; Ehlers, Hackmann, & Michael, 2004 ; Nolen-Hoeksema, 2000 ; Poerio, Totterdell, & Miles, 2013 ; Smallwood, Fishman, & Schooler, 2007 ; Smallwood, McSpadden, & Schooler, 2007 ; Whitfield-Gabrieli & Ford, 2012 ).

These deficiencies often manifest as increased distractibility or elevated levels of mind-wandering ( Smallwood, Fishman, et al., 2007 ; Watkins, 2008 ). Depressed individuals demonstrate an increased disposition for rumination and experience difficulties updating the contents of working memory and switching tasks ( Deng et al., 2014 ). This leads to preexisting goal states exerting a stronger influence on ongoing mental processes and thought content in depressed individuals than for normal individuals ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014 ; Fox et al., 2013 , 2015 ). Individuals who score higher on constructs related to depression and trait negative affect on questionnaires also rate their self-generated thoughts as more negative in valence ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2013 ). Together these studies suggest that in the case of clinical and psychopathological conditions, an inability to monitor and disengage from the occurrence of excessive or distracting self-generated thoughts in a context-dependent manner is associated with impairments in wellbeing ( Andrews-Hanna, Smallwood, & Spreng, 2014 ).

Opposing constructs?

When compared to mindfulness which aims to facilitate attentional focus, clarity, and stability, spontaneous thought and mind-wandering are characteristically defined as the disruption of focused attention or task focus ( Smallwood & Schooler, 2006 ). Mind-wandering (spontaneous thought) has been shown to be particularly recurrent during nondemanding tasks and restful waking states ( Kane et al., 2007 ; Singer, 1966 ), and appears to have a distinctly ‘mindless’ quality ( Smallwood & Schooler, 2006 ), such as rapid and automatic responding during continuous performance tasks ( Smallwood, Baracaia, Lowe, & Obonsawin, 2003 ), eye-movements during reading that demonstrate a reduced processing of the lexical or linguistic properties of what is being read (indicating perceptual decoupling; Reichle, Reineberg, & Schooler, 2010 ), as well as absent-minded forgetting ( Smallwood et al., 2003 ; Smallwood & Schooler, 2006 ). The degree to which the constructs of mindfulness and mind-wandering oppose one another was explored in a set of studies by Mrazek and colleagues (2012) wherein they addressed the relationship between a dispositional measure of mindfulness using the Mindful Attention and Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003 ) and converging measures of both self-reported and indirect markers of mind-wandering. Negative correlations between dispositional mindfulness and four measures of mind-wandering suggest a relatively opposing relationship between the two constructs. They additionally found that eight minutes of mindful breathing reduces behavioral indicators of mind-wandering during a Sustained Attention to Response Task compared with both passive relaxation and reading. While these findings suggest a relatively opposing nature of the two constructs ( Mrazek et al., 2012 ), the degree to which thoughts are constrained (or unconstrained) based on the task, or on the objectives of a given meditation practice is likely to influence the degree to with which these constructs oppose one another.

This is supported by findings from Colzato and colleagues (2012b) who found that open monitoring meditation (which promotes the ability to observe ongoing mental content and attend to various transient stimuli) increased creativity in an idea generation task, whereas focused attention meditation (training the ability to focus attention and awareness) did not. In an additional set of studies by Ostafin and Kassman (2012) , the authors showed that a greater tendency toward mindfulness (which is generally taught as a style of open monitoring meditation), as assessed through the MAAS, was associated with an increased chance of solving the puzzles, and that a brief session of mindfulness meditation improved both situational mindfulness and problem solving. The authors take the position that mindfulness and the emphasis placed on the ‘present moment’ experience reduces the tendency toward habitual responses when searching for the solution to a creative problem. Zedelius and colleagues (2015) conducted a study to explore whether creative problems approached through an analytic meditation strategy or through an insight meditation (i.e., sudden awareness of a solution) would impact measures of creativity. They found impaired problem solving when approaching problems with insight meditation, whereas increased problem solving performance was associated with the use of the analytic (i.e., thought-based) meditation approach.

Baird and colleagues (2012) explored the hypothesis that mind-wandering would be associated with enhanced creativity through the use of incubation tasks that systematically varied in their levels of attentional demand and thus in their conduciveness to mind-wandering. Their findings suggest that performing an undemanding task during the incubation period improved creative performance to a greater extent than performing a demanding task, resting, or taking no break. They additionally found that scores on the daydreaming frequency subscale of the Imaginal Processes Inventory - a questionnaire measure that assesses individual’s tendency for mind-wandering in everyday life ( Gold and Gold, 1982 ), correlated positively with scores on a classic creativity task both for repeated exposure and new exposure problems on the task. This last result suggests that specific types of spontaneous, unrelated thoughts facilitate creative problem solving, and that individuals who mind-wander more frequently in their daily lives may also be more creative in general. Although mind-wandering may be linked to compromised performance on a variety of experimenter-defined tasks ( Barron et al., 2011 ; McVay & Kane, 2010 ), it also serves to facilitate creative ideas ( Baird et al., 2012 ; Schooler et al., 2014 ) and memory consolidation ( Addis et al., 2012 ).

Spontaneous thought content, affect, and well-being

Well-being is related to a complex variety of factors including culture, socioeconomic status, health, the quality of interpersonal relations, and specific psychological processes (Dinero, Conger, Shaver, Widaman, & Larsen-Rife, 2008). Research findings suggest that both the content of self-generated thought and the context under which it occurs significantly influence both the cognitive and affective impact of the experience, elucidating why the experience of mind-wandering can be detrimental for some individuals yet beneficial for others ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014 ; Andrews-Hanna, Smallwood, & Spreng, 2014 ). Clinical research suggests that the ability to distance oneself and observe the ongoing internal train of thoughts plays a vital role in psychological wellbeing ( Farb et al., 2007 ). Within the domain of cognitive psychology, latent conceptions of self are thought to underlie (to a significant degree) our thoughts and emotions and directly impact brain function ( Hofmann, Schmeichel, & Baddeley, 2012 ). It has been proposed that one of the primary mechanisms by which contemplative practices affect well-being is by targeting and altering maladaptive self-referential thought patterns ( Dahl et al., 2015 ). The content regulation hypothesis ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014 ) suggests that a direct interaction between mood and content influence the relationship to affect ( Christoff, Gordon, Smallwood, Smith, & Schooler, 2009 ; Deng et al., 2014 ; Fox et al., 2018 ; Poerio et al., 2013 ; Ruby et al., 2013 ; Smallwood et al., 2011 ), with research directly linking the retrospective orientation of mind-wandering to premature aging ( Epel et al., 2013 ) and negative affect.

Trait and state effects, emotion reappraisal, and the role of acceptance

Meditation training is thought to induce both state and trait effects. The term state effects refers to the distinction between ordinary mental states, and the specific mental states that are experienced during various styles of meditation practice. Changes that occur over months or years are referred to as trait effects. It is generally accepted that state effects translate to long-term trait effects with practice ( Cahn & Polich, 2006 ). For example, thought reappraisal during meditation can be considered a state effect that occurs during the practice of meditation, however long-term training may lead to thought reappraisal that extends beyond formal meditation practice evolving into what could be considered a trait. Accumulative exposure to and awareness of the ongoing cognitive and affective dynamics involved in spontaneous thought processes plays a central role in the mechanisms underlying meditation practice ( Hasenkamp et al., 2012 ), and the benefits observed in the context of emotion reappraisal ( Hölzel et al., 2011 ). A growing body of literature now suggests that the key factors implicated in the regulation of emotion involve reappraisal, exposure, extinction, and reconsolidation ( Hölzel et al., 2011 ). Hanley and Garland (2014) found that mindfulness practice led to an increase in positive reappraisal of thoughts. They argue that mindfulness practice facilitates positive reappraisal, with reappraisal functioning as an adaptive process through which stressful events are reconstructed as beneficial, meaningful, or benign.

Additional literature suggests that during mindfulness meditation meditators allow themselves to be affected by the experience of their thoughts while refraining from engaging in internal reactivity towards them by cultivating acceptance of bodily and affective responses ( Hart, 2011 ; Hölzel et al., 2011 ). Thus, the accumulative impact of meditation training on the reappraisal of ongoing thoughts that occur during mind-wandering episodes (or even during more constrained forms of self-generated thought) may help to facilitate enhanced awareness and reduced reactivity to the content of spontaneous thoughts, and this may serve as one of the key mechanisms by which meditation practices shape the cognitive-affective lens through which we perceive the content of mind-wandering. Research investigating the effects of a brief attention-monitoring combined with an acceptance mindfulness training program found significantly reduced mind-wandering when compared with an attention-monitoring only mindfulness training program ( Rahl, Lindsay, Pacilio, Brown, & Creswell, 2017 ). These findings directly support the key role of acceptance implicated in mind-wandering, and further elucidate the cognitive mechanisms underlying mindfulness training ( Chiesa & Malinowski, 2011 ; Creswell & Lindsay, 2014 ; Franklin et al., 2013 ; Moore & Malinowski, 2009 ; Teper & Inzlicht, 2013 ). This research suggests that the aspect of ‘acceptance of present-moment experience’ cultivated in mindfulness training, which includes the acceptance of spontaneous thought and mind-wandering, leads to reduced emotional reactivity to adverse thought content allowing for an improved capacity for the reallocation of attention. These findings are supported by neuroimaging research which has shown notable similarities in the brain regions influenced by mindfulness meditation and those involved in mediating fear extinction, namely the hippocampus, amygdala, medial PFC, and the ventromedial PFC ( Goldin & Gross, 2010 ; Hölzel et al., 2011 ; Lazar et al., 2000 ; Lou et al., 1999 ; Luders, Toga, Lepore, & Gaser, 2009 ; Newberg et al., 2001 ; Unsworth & McMillan, 2013 ). Furthermore, these regions (with the exception of the amygdala) coincide with the key hubs in the broader neural substrates of the default network (DMN), and as we will discuss in the following section, are heavily implicated during self-generated thought and mind-wandering.

Meditation, affect, and emotion regulation

Several recent studies have explored how the constructs of mindfulness and the valence of self-generated thought may interact. While these studies implement measures of mindfulness assessed via questionnaire (which are notoriously biased and have been the source of significant criticism; Van Dam et al., 2018 ), several recent studies provide evidence for the direct relationship between mindfulness and the valence of self-generated thought. Evans and colleagues (2011), as well as Andrews-Hannah and colleagues (2013), correlated participants scores on the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ), which purports to measure trait levels of mindfulness ( Baer, Smith, Hopkins, Krietemeyer, & Toney, 2006 ), alongside the affective qualities of self-generated thoughts. They both found that higher trait mindfulness scores significantly predicted more emotionally positive thought content. In support of these findings, Frewen and colleagues (2008) found that dispositional mindfulness as measured by their Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS; Brown & Ryan, 2003 ) negatively correlated with the frequency of negative thoughts. These findings correspond with research suggesting that mindful individuals report heightened positive affect in general ( Brown & Ryan, 2003 ; Hölzel et al., 2011 ; Jazaieri et al., 2014 ; Teper et al., 2013 ) and that meditation may facilitate positive affect. This is supported by findings by Jazaieri and colleauges (2016) who found that the number of hours of seated compassion meditation practice during nine weeks of compassion meditation training predicted the affective qualities of off-task thought. They found that the number of hours of practice predicted reduced off-task thoughts to both negative and neutral topics, and increased off-task thoughts to positive topics. Research studying the neural mechanisms underlying the regulation of emotion have been directly linked to brain regions associated with attention and cognitive control, including the dorsomedial, dorsolateral, and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, as well as the posterior parietal cortex ( Ochsner & Gross, 2005 ; Ochsner et al., 2004 ). Meditation and mindfulness practices may mediate emotion regulation and emotional reactivity to self-generated thought content by strengthening prefrontal cognitive control mechanisms via suppression of activity in the amygdala. Supporting this hypothesis, diminished activations in the amygdala in response to emotional stimuli have been found in experienced meditation practitioners ( Tang et al., 2015 ).

Spontaneous thought is mediated by brain networks implicated in meditation

Significant progress over the last decade has been made in identifying the brain networks underlying mind-wandering and the generation and maintenance of self-referential thought processes. Research consistently shows default mode network (DMN) activations during both probe-caught and self-reported episodes of mind-wandering ( Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 ), in addition to increased activation when individuals are at rest in an MRI scanner ( Raichle et al., 2001 ). Interestingly, the emphasis on the flexible monitoring of self-referential thought processes and ongoing experience during meditation has been theoretically attributed to the increased functional connectivity within the DMN ( Brewer et al., 2011 ; Garrison, Zeffiro, Scheinost, Constable, & Brewer, 2015 ; Jang et al., 2011 ; Tang et al., 2015 ; Wells et al., 2013 ), and between the DMN and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC; Brewer et al., 2011 ) that is observed in experienced meditation practitioners. It is of importance to note here that the lateral PFC is a region associated with both exogenous and endogenous attentional states, meta-awareness, and executive functioning ( Froeliger et al., 2012a ; Hasenkamp & Barsalou, 2012 ; Teper et al., 2013 ).

Research in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has identified the regions that comprise the DMN ( Fig. 3 ; Raichle et al., 2001 ; Raichle, 2015 ) including the medial prefrontal cortex (specifically, the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC), the rostral anterior cingulate, and parts of the anterior and ventral mPFC), the lateral frontal cortex (the superior frontal cortex and the inferior frontal gyrus), the medial parietal cortex (the posterior cingulate and retrosplenial cortex), the medial temporal lobe (the hippocampus and parahippocampal cortices), the lateral parietal cortex (spanning the angular gyrus and the posterior supramarginal gyrus/TPJ), and the lateral temporal cortex (extending anteriorly to the temporal poles). The DMN also includes large areas of the cerebellum (including Crus I and Crus II subdivisions) and the striatum (the medial wall of the caudate and the posterior putamen; ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2010 ). While a set key regions originally identified through the repeated observation of patterns of deactivation during goal-directed tasks (as compared to passive control conditions) were thought to reflect the DMN ( Raichle et al., 2001 ), recent findings have shown that during goal-directed tasks of an internal nature, significant task-dependent variability in DMN activations have been observed ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2010 , 2014 ; Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014 ).

Template maps for the cortical networks implicated in the cognitive processes underlying the meditative cycle: default network (DN), frontoparietal control network (FPCN), salience network (SN), and dorsal attention network (DAN). Color intensities indicate factor loading of each voxel with the network template in the reference dataset. Used with permission from Shaw et al., (2015) .

Recent advances in resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) analysis have now enabled a more comprehensive understanding of the functionally integrated relationship between spatially separated brain regions and the complexity of the DMN, revealing its distinct yet interacting subsystems ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2010 , 2014 ; Fox et al., 2015 ; Gusnard et al., 2001 ). Andrews-Hanna and colleagues recently identified three key subsystems that constitute the DMN. A medial temporal subsystem comprised of the hippocampus, the parahippocampal cortex, the retrosplenial cortex (RSC), the posterior inferior parietal lobe, and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC). This subsystem significantly corresponds with meta-analytic maps pertaining to past and future autobiographical thought (i.e., autobiographical, past, future), episodic memory (i.e., episodic, memories, remember, recollection, recall) and contextual retrieval ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2014 ). A dorsal medial subsystem comprises the dorsal medial PFC (dmPFC), the temporoparietal junction (TPJ), the lateral temporal cortex, and the temporal pole, regions that correspond with meta-analytic maps pertaining to social cognition (i.e., mentalizing, social, person, theory of mind, mental, scenarios), as well as story comprehension and semantic and conceptual processing (i.e., sentence, story, meaning, knowledge, language, word, syntactic). A third subsystem is comprised of regions along the cortical midline, including the anterior medial PFC (amPFC) and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) exhibit strong functional coherence with both subsystems and are hypothesized to act as functional hubs, allowing information to transfer between subsystems. The PCC, angular gyrus, and amPFC are the most consistently engaged regions within the DMN, regions directly associated with self-related processes (i.e., self-referential, self, autobiographical, personal), emotion/evaluation (i.e., positive, negative, moral), and social and mnemonic processes, features shared by both the dorsal medial and medial temporal subsystem (i.e., social, person, mentalizing, recollection, retrieval, memories; Andrews-Hanna, Saxe, & Yarkoni, 2014 ). Additional findings suggest that the PCC hub is a heterogeneous brain structure, with subdivisions characterized by distinct patterns of structural and functional connectivity that echo the neural signals from several additional large-scale brain networks. These observations suggest that the broader PCC can be viewed as an important integration zone supporting bottom-up mechanisms of attention that enable behaviorally relevant sources of information to be drawn from memory and perceptual information. A recent paper by Andrews-Hanna and colleagues (2014) argues that together these neural systems support a majority of the mental content underlying self-generated thought.

Functional connectivity in regions of the DMN, a measure of the temporal correlation of the BOLD signal between these regions, has also been found to differ between meditators and controls, not only during meditation but also at rest ( Brewer et al., 2011 ; Pagnoni, 2012 ; Taylor et al., 2013 ). This suggests that meditation training may alter the behavioral state that individuals enter when given the standard resting-state instructions. One interpretation of these findings would be that increased functional connectivity in the DMN may in turn reduce blood-oxygen-level-dependent imaging (BOLD) activity, reflecting an increased efficiency in the distribution of cognitive resources ( Baars, 2005 ). Another possible explanation for the relationship between reduced BOLD activity and increased functional connectivity in advanced practitioners may be due to the increased connectivity between networks involved in monitoring and attention that overlap with the DMN, rather than specifically DMN. An additional alternative explanation may be that meditators engage in less spontaneous thought during rest and therefore show reduced BOLD signal in the DMN (although this does not account for the increased functional connectivity).

However, even if it were the case that the increased functional connectivity in the DMN reflects connections to regions overlapping with other networks, together these findings support the notion that both endogenous and exogenous forms of cognitive activity such as mind-wandering and meditation both recruit regions in both the DMN in addition to overlapping regions and networks implicated in the regulation of executive functions. While the relationship between the DMN and mind-wandering has been extensively studied within neuroscience ( Dixon, Fox, & Christoff, 2014 ; Kucyi, Salomons, & Davis, 2013 ), activity in the DMN alone does not capture the broader neural landscape associated with the occurrence, duration, frequency, and maintenance of mind-wandering and spontaneous thought ( Anticevic et al., 2012 ; Berman et al., 2011 ; Stawarczyk, Majerus, Maquet, & D’Argembeau, 2011 ; Vanhaudenhuyse et al., 2011 ; Whitfield-Gabrieli & Ford, 2012 ). A general picture of brain activity involved in mind-wandering and spontaneous thought is beginning to emerge, implicating brain networks beyond the DMN such as the frontoparietal control network (FPCN), the dorsal attention network (DAN), and the salience network (SN; Christoff et al., 2009 ; Dixon et al., 2018 ; Ellamil et al., 2016 ; Fox et al., 2016 ). The FPCN includes lateral prefrontal cortex, precuneus (PCu), the anterior extent of the inferior parietal lobule (aIPL), medial superior prefrontal cortex (msPFC) and the anterior insula (aINS; Spreng, Sepulcre, Turner, Stevens, & Schacter, 2012 ). This network has been proposed to modulate top-down mechanisms involved in sustaining both endogenous and exogenous forms of attention allocation ( Spreng et al., 2012 ). As discussed in Smallwood et al (2012) the ability to generate and sustain an internal train of thought is facilitated through cooperation between autobiographical information provided by the DMN and a frontal–parietal control network which helps sustain and buffer internal trains of thought against disruption by the external world. Spreng and colleagues (2012) suggest that the FPCN facilitates goal-directed cognition, which functions as a gatekeeping system by moderating the dynamic balance between activations in the DMN and the DAN ( Fig. 3 ). It may also facilitate alternating or competing goal representations while maintaining directed attention to a given external task (i.e. driving, running; Spreng et al., 2012 ). Concurrent activations in both the DMN and core regions of the executive functioning network (dorsolateral PFC, mPFC, ACC), networks that were traditionally considered independent, anti-correlated, and thought to compete for cognitive resources, have been shown to co-activate during mind-wandering episodes, increasingly so when subjects reported being unaware of mind-wandering ( Christoff et al., 2009 ; Fox et al., 2015 ).

Similar to the work of Andrews-Hanna and colleagues that fractionated the DMN, recent research by Dixon and colleagues (2018) examined patterns of FPCN functional connectivity across multiple conditions of varying cognitive demand, identifying two distinct subsystems within the FPCN. These two FPCN subsystems exhibited unique patterns of functional connectivity with the DMN and the DAN. The first subsystem FPCN(a) includes the rostrolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior inferior parietal lobule, presupplementary motor area, and middle temporal gyrus, and exhibited significantly stronger measures of connectivity with the DMN than the DAN. The FPCN(b) consists of the intraparietal sulcus, posterior inferior frontal sulcus/inferior frontal junction (IFS/IFJ), posterior superior frontal sulcus, and left posterior middle temporal gyrus, and exhibited the opposite pattern. These findings provide new evidence suggesting that the organization of the FPCN is both flexible and heterogeneous, and that it may emerge from separable DMN and DAN processing streams ( Dixon et al., 2014 , 2018 ). The authors propose that FPCN(a) may be preferentially involved in the regulation of introspective processes, whereas FPCN(b) may be preferentially involved in the regulation of visuospatial perceptual attention.

A number of additional structural and functional MRI studies on mindfulness training have investigated the neuroplasticity in brain regions supporting the regulation of attention. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), another key hub of the FPCN, is an area in the brain that has been consistently linked to improvements in attention regulation following training in mindfulness ( Hölzel et al., 2011 ; Tang & Posner, 2009 , 2014 ; Tang, Rothbart, & Posner, 2012 ). The ACC and the fronto-insular cortex are thought to enable executive attention and control by detecting the presence of conflicts emerging from incompatible streams of information processing, thus facilitating cognitive processing through long-range connections to other brain areas ( van Veen & Carter, 2002 ). These mechanisms may work synergistically by establishing a process of enhanced meta-awareness and self-regulation following long-term meditation practice (Baird, Mrazek, et al., 2014; Baird et al., 2013 , 2013 ; Dorjee, 2016 ; Fleming & Dolan, 2012 ; Sanger & Dorjee, 2016 ; Tang et al., 2015 ). Furthermore, the perigenual ACC is implicated in emotional feeling states, evidenced by patterns of activation that correspond with the valence of stimuli ( Roy, Shohamy, & Wager, 2012 ). However, its role appears to be specifically related to the process of attributing conceptual meaning to bodily sensations and interweaving feeling states with self-referential thinking in addition to the capacity to identify and understand interoceptive feeling states ( Fleming et al., 2010 ; Fox et al., 2018 ; Roy et al., 2012 ).

According to Hasenkamp and colleagues’ (2012) study, when attention was reoriented back to a focused attention meditation after an episode of mind-wandering, increased activations in the lateral PFC and inferior parietal cortex were observed, suggesting that executive resources were recruited to deactivate the DMN by decoupling the node shared by the FPCN and the DMN. Furthermore, increased activity in the dorsolateral PFC (dlPFC), a central hub of the FPCN that has been repeatedly implicated in studies of focused attention and executive control, was observed during focused attention meditation ( Brewer et al., 2011 ). The work of Hasenkamp and Barslow (2012) investigated the brain networks directly implicated in the various phases of the meditation cycle. These findings highlighted the activity associated with the transitions between mind-wandering and a return to focused-attention, highlighting the key role of the salience network in signaling the detection of mind-wandering and the relaying of this information to the executive network. Metacognitive awareness of one’s thoughts, along with attention and performance, have also been directly linked the rostrolateral PFC (rlPFC; Fleming & Dolan, 2012 ; McCaig et al., 2011 ). Research investigating the neural correlates of lucid dreaming, wherein individuals become aware of and are engaged in the progression and content of their dreams, show that individuals who report a high degree of lucidity show increased grey matter volume in the medial and rlPFC, as well as enhanced rlPFC activity during tasks that require the subjects to monitor the contents of their thoughts ( Filevich, Dresler, Brick, & Kühn, 2015 ).The FPCN has also been widely implicated in lucid rapid eye movement (REM) sleep when compared to non-lucid REM sleep ( Dresler et al., 2012 ). Thus, accumulating research suggests that the FPCN plays a direct role in the control processes related to the meta-awareness of spontaneous thought and mind-wandering by monitoring and constraining the transitions between mental states by suppressing and directing the degree spontaneity ( Fox & Christoff, 2014 ). Meditation practice may target these monitoring mechanisms through the active process of detecting mind-wandering and the redirecting of attention.

Neuroimaging results show that mindfulness meditation practitioners also exhibit significantly greater rsFC in the DAN when compared with meditation naive individuals, and that mindfulness meditation practice in the MRI scanner (msFC) was associated with increased functional connectivity when compared to resting state levels (i.e., msFC > rsFC) between the DAN and DMN and the right PFC node of the salience network ( Froeliger et al., 2012a ). These findings suggest that mindfulness practice enhances functional connectivity within attentional networks as well as across broadly distributed brain regions sub-serving the regulation of introspective, attentional, self-referential, and emotional processes ( Brewer et al., 2011 ; Dixon et al., 2014 ; Froeliger et al., 2012b ; Garrison et al., 2014 ). Additional neuroimaging evidence also indicates that sustained activity in the salience network has been observed during meditation in long-term practitioners ( Fig. 3 ; Brefczynski-Lewis, Lutz, Schaefer, Levinson, & Davidson, 2007 ; Doll, Hölzel, Boucard, Wohlschläger, & Sorg, 2015 ; Hasenkamp et al., 2012 ). The salience network includes the bilateral anterior insula, lateral orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), anterior and mid-cingulate cortex, amygdala, and hypothalamus and is thought to facilitate the identification of relevant and salient stimuli and sustained cognitive focus ( Doll et al., 2015 ; Menon & Uddin, 2010 ; Mooneyham & Schooler, 2013 ; Ptak, 2012 ; Seeley et al., 2007 ). Biases in affective and perceptual attention can be thought to reflect natural constraints, which serve to capture and sustain attention on a focal source ( Christoff et al., 2016 , 2016 ; Irving, 2016 ; Todd, Cunningham, Anderson, & Thompson, 2012 ). Although evidence for a relationship between mind-wandering and nature of these constraints is limited, recent studies on depression and anxiety suggests that the brain’s salience network may play a key role ( McMenamin, Langeslag, Sirbu, Padmala, & Pessoa, 2014 ; Seeley et al., 2007 ; Young et al., 2017 ).

The salience network and activity in the dACC/pre-somatosensory motor area (pre-SMA) is thought to reflect the detection of conflict (e.g., mind-wandering when it occurs during an ongoing task), and may therefore be involved in determining the expected cost/benefit ratio tradeoffs of being either on- versus off-task. The insula has also been heavily implicated in the generation of self-generated thought and may be more heavily involved in viscero-somatic sensations (cardiac, respiratory, etc.) and feeling states (Fox 2018). The insula is also thought to play a role in detecting and signaling affective salience ( Markovic, Anderson, & Todd, 2014 ; Menon & Uddin, 2010 ; Seeley et al., 2007 ), with the anterior insula having been shown to be directly related to the degree to which thoughts trigger, or are triggered by, physiological arousal and other concrete bodily feelings ( Craig, 2002 ; Fox et al., 2018 ). Consistent with this hypothesis, awareness of visceral and internal psychological states, including heart rate and respiration is often referred to as interoception and has been consistently linked to activity in the insula (Craig and Craig, 2009; Critchley et al., 2004) in addition to metacognitive awareness ( Fleming and Dolan, 2012 ) and emotional self-awareness (Craig, 2004). Additional research has found that viscero-somatic information is progressively refined from the posterior to anterior insula, the anterior insula contributing directly to interoceptive awareness ( Craig, 2002 ). When comparing meditators during meditation versus non-meditation states, we find brain areas focused on self-regulation, focused problem-solving, adaptive behavior, interoception, monitoring body states, reorienting attention, and processing self-relevant information (Boccia et al., 2015). Given that approximately two-thirds of self-generated thoughts are emotional in nature, it is highly probable that self-generated thoughts regularly recruit brain areas and networks implicated in emotional processing ( Andrews-Hanna et al., 2013 ; Fox et al., 2018 ; Ruby et al., 2013 )

Meditation and modulations of attention regulation and sensory perception

Accumulating findings from contemplative neuroscience research suggest that meditation practice strengthens the top-down feedback mechanisms involved in the regulation of attention ( Brefczynski-Lewis et al., 2007 ; Chan & Woollacott, 2007 ; Jha, Krompinger, & Baime, 2007 ; Lutz et al., 2009 ; MacLean et al., 2010 ; Moore & Malinowski, 2009 ; Slagter, Davidson, & Lutz, 2011 ; Slagter, Lutz, Greischar, Nieuwenhuis, & Davidson, 2008 ; Valentine & Sweet, 1999 ; van den Hurk et al., 2010 ). According to the neurocognitive model developed by Posner and Petersen, attention can be divided into three different anatomically and functionally distinct networks. These networks implement the functions of alerting (i.e., the anticipatory preparation for an incoming stimulus), orienting (i.e., the directing of attention to a specific stimulus), and conflict monitoring (i.e., executive attention: resolving conflict between competing neural activity; Petersen & Posner, 2012 ; Posner & Petersen, 1990 ). Additional distinctions between different forms of attention involve combinations of these three components ( Posner & Rothbart, 2007 ). For example, sustained attention refers to the sense of vigilance during long continuous tasks and may involve both tonic alerting (i.e., intrinsic arousal that fluctuates on the order of minutes to hours) and orienting, whereas selective attention may involve either orienting (when a stimulus is present) and executive functions (when the processing of stored information is involved; Desimone & Duncan, 1995 ). Furthermore, regions of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex that are heavily implicated in attentional processes that engage the executive network ( Curtis & D’Esposito, 2003 ; D’Esposito, 2007 ; Miller & Cohen, 2001 ) have been directly implicated in the practice of focused attention meditation ( Hofmann et al., 2012 ; Teper & Inzlicht, 2013 ).

These findings are consistent with the notion that meditation practices engage brain areas involved in inhibition ( Brefczynski-Lewis et al., 2007 ), as well as in the detection of conflict between goal states (i.e., focused attention on the breath conflicting with the occurrence of spontaneous thought; Hasenkamp & Barsalou, 2012 ; Hasenkamp et al., 2012 ). This is further evidenced by research by Moore and Malinowski (2009) and Chan and Woollacott (2007) who found reduced effects of distracting and conflicting information in the Stroop task in mindfulness meditators. Van den Hurk and colleagues (2010) found reduced interference by distracting flankers in the attention network test in mindfulness meditators, validating previous findings that mindfulness meditation leads to an increased flexibility in the orientation of attention by reducing the time needed to shift attention from one location to another ( Hodgins & Adair, 2010 ; Jha et al., 2007 ; van den Hurk et al., 2010 ). In a study comparing relaxation, open monitoring meditation, and focused attention meditation on performance on an emotional variant of the Attention Network Test (ANT), only focused attention and open monitoring practices were found to improve executive attention ( Ainsworth et al., 2013 ). Together these findings contribute to a large and accumulating body of evidence that mindfulness meditation targets mechanisms implicated in executive attention and the detection of conflicting mental states.

Electroencephalography (EEG) findings from our previous work ( Brandmeyer & Delorme, 2018 ) indicate that increased mid-frontal theta (4–6 Hz) and somatosensory alpha (8–12 Hz), cortical oscillations that have been observed during tasks assessing measures of executive function ( Bollimunta, Mo, Schroeder, & Ding, 2011 ; Cavanagh & Frank, 2014 ; Cavanagh & Shackman, 2015 ; Enriquez-Geppert, Huster, Figge, & Herrmann, 2014 ), were also present during internally guided states of focus such as meditation, a result consistent with previous findings in the literature ( Aftanas & Golocheikine, 2001 ; Kerr et al., 2013 ). These findings may also suggest a functional relationship between the sources contributing to cortical mid-frontal theta activity and the broader FPCN, a network involved in maintaining top-down representations of goal states, learning, directed attention, and the regulation of spontaneous thought ( Cavanagh & Frank, 2014 ; deBettencourt, Cohen, Lee, Norman, & Turk-Browne, 2015 ). The role of cortical theta in meditation practice and the cultivation of top-down control via the enhancement of monitoring and conflict detection falls in line with the established literature regarding its specific role in learning ( Haegens et al., 2010 ; Swick & Turken, 2002 ). Cavanagh & Frank (2014) have suggested that cortical theta (4–6 Hz) oscillations may serve as a candidate mechanism by which neurons communicate top-down control over long range and broad networks. Mid-frontal theta has been proposed to function as a temporal template for organizing mid-frontal neuronal processes ( Cavanagh & Frank, 2014 ), with theta-band phase dynamics thought to entrain disparate neural systems when cognitive control is needed (e.g., through entrainment of cortical and subcortical areas via the cingulate cortex; Bollimunta, Chen, Schroeder, & Ding, 2009 ; Morecraft & Tanji, 2009). Our previous findings provide evidence in support of the claims posited by Spreng and colleagues (2012) that the maintenance of both internal and external orientations of focus may be maintained by similar cortical theta synchronization mechanisms and suggest that meditation training may target the neural substrates underlying these oscillations.

Spontaneous fluctuations between two distinct and supposedly opposite modes during resting-state brain activity have been observed ( Fransson, 2005 ). One of these modes is characterized by the presence of slow theta oscillations, a cortical activity associated with reduced levels of vigilance. The other mode is characterized by the presence of fast oscillations of 12–30 Hz, which are usually associated with high vigilance levels ( Laufs et al., 2003 ). These spontaneous patterns of increased and decreased theta activity have been associated with periods of mind-wandering and periods of concentration, as shown in a study by Braboszcz and Delorme (2011) . During a breath awareness counting task in which subjects used the self-report method to indicate mind-wandering events, they showed an increase in occipitoparietal theta and frontocentral delta (1–3 Hz) during mind-wandering, and suggest that these findings may reflect the increased BOLD activity observed in fMRI studies investigating the DMN ( Braboszcz & Delorme, 2011 ). A functional relationship between cortical phase-locking and fluctuations in endogenous attentional states has been suggested by investigations examining the impact of training in focused attention meditation on the degree of cortical phase-locking to stimuli presentations in sustained attention tasks ( Lutz et al., 2009 ; Slagter et al., 2008 ). Lutz and colleagues (2009) found that three months of focused meditation training resulted in a smaller attentional blink and reduced brain-resource allocation to the first target (T1), demonstrated by a significantly smaller T1-elicited P3b (i.e. a neural index of resource allocation after training). Subjects with the largest decrease in cognitive resource allocation to T1 showed the largest reduction in the measured attentional-blink size, suggesting that an ability to accurately identify T2 depends upon the efficient deployment of cognitive resources to T1.

The authors hypothesized that the mental training induced increases in phase-locking were related to the capacity to sustain task-related attentional focus and a reduced tendency to engage in task-unrelated thoughts. It may be that long term meditation practice engages both top-down mechanisms underlying sustained attention as well as bottom-up processing of distracting sensory or thought related information ( Lutz et al., 2008 ). In a separate study, long-term Tibetan Nyingmapa and Kagyupa Buddhist practitioners were able to self-induce sustained high-amplitude gamma-band (25–42 Hz) oscillations and phase-synchrony, most notably over the lateral frontoparietal electrodes ( Lutz, Greischar, Rawlings, Ricard, & Davidson, 2004 ). Interestingly, in a study by Baird and colleagues (2014), they explored the sensory decoupling that occurs during mind-wandering, and whether it was mediated by the phase of ongoing cortical oscillations across one or more frequencies ( Baird, Smallwood, Lutz, & Schooler, 2014 ). This was done by analyzing the impact of task-unrelated thought on phase of cortical activity to sensory stimuli during a vigilance task, wherein a time-frequency analysis of the oscillatory neural response revealed a decrease in theta-band cortical phase-locking, which peaked over parietal scalp regions.

Recent findings published by Braboszcz and colleagues (2017) compared practitioners of three different meditation traditions (Vipassana, Himalayan Yoga, and Isha Shoonya) with a control group during a meditative and instructed mind-wandering condition, and found that all meditators showed higher parieto-occipital 60–110 Hz gamma amplitude than control subjects as a trait effect observed during meditation and when considering meditation and instructed mind-wandering periods together. Moreover, this gamma power was positively correlated with participants’ meditation experience. Additionally, they controlled for the potential contamination of muscle artifact and studied artifact activity in different experimental conditions using independent component analysis ( Braboszcz et al., 2017 ; Delorme and Makeig, 2004; >Delorme et al., 2007). Cahn and colleagues (2010) found that the cross-experimental session occipital gamma power was significantly larger in meditators with more than 10 years of daily practice, and that the meditation-related gamma power increase was similarly the strongest in such advanced practitioners ( Cahn, Delorme, & Polich, 2010 ). These findings suggest that long-term Vipassana meditation contributes to increased parieto-occipital gamma power related to long-term meditational expertise, and lend support to the link between meditation practice and increased EEG coherence (thought to facilitate the central executive functions of cognitive control and working memory; Sauseng, Klimesch, Schabus, & Doppelmayr, 2005 ). This in turn may result in the self-regulation of lower level elements of neurogenesis ( Vago & Silbersweig, 2012 ), increased cognitive flexibility ( Slagter et al., 2011 , 2008 ), and efficient distribution of limited brain resources ( Baars, 2005 ; Lutz et al., 2008 , 2009 ).

Another intriguing finding emerging from the field of contemplative neuroscience involves the mediating role of contemplative and meditative practices on the neural mechanisms underlying sensory perception. In a study using magnetoencephalography (MEG) recording of the somatosensory cortex finger representation, Kerr and colleagues (2011) found that experienced meditators showed an enhanced alpha power modulation in response to a cue, potentially reflecting an enhanced filtering of inputs to primary sensory cortex. They also found that experienced meditators demonstrated modified alpha rhythm properties and an increase in non-localized tonic alpha power when compared to controls. An electroencephalography (EEG) study by Braboszcz and Delorme (2011) showed enhanced cortical processing of sensory stimuli during a sustained breath-focus task when compared to periods of time in which subjects reported mind-wandering. Known as the perceptual decoupling hypothesis, behavioral and neurocognitive evidence indicates that when mental events arise that are unrelated to perception they are frequently associated with a decoupling of attention from perception (Schooler et al., 2011), and that changes in spontaneous thought and mind-wandering can be either coupled or decoupled from exogenous and external perceptual events in the surrounding environment (reflecting the extent to which an individual can constrain mind-wandering; Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 ). Interestingly, Whitmarsh and colleagues (2014) investigated participant’s metacognitive ability to report on their attentional focus, and found that a contralateral somatosensory alpha power decrease was correlated with higher reported attentional focus to either their left or right hand respectively ( Whitmarsh, Barendregt, Schoffelen, & Jensen, 2014 ). Enhanced body awareness was also found to be associated with greater subjective emotional experience and awareness of heart beats during exposure to emotionally provocative stimuli in Vipassana meditators, when compared to expert dancers, and controls ( Sze et al., 2010 ). These findings can most likely be attributed to the emphasis on somatic attention training in mindfulness meditation techniques in which individuals train to develop both interoceptive awareness and metacognition; a process in which one cultivates an awareness and understanding of one’s own thought processes, and to an overall somatosensory awareness of physical sensations, feelings, and thought content ( Bishop et al., 2004 ; Farb et al., 2007 ; Segal, Teasdale, & Williams, 2004 ). Interestingly, Baird and colleagues (2014) found that a 2-week meditation program led to significantly enhanced metacognitive judgments of cognition on a trial-by-trial basis in the domain of memory, but not for perceptual decisions, suggesting that while only 2 weeks of meditation training can enhance certain elements of introspective acuity, such improvements may not apply equally to all cognitive domains, or at least may require more than 2 weeks of meditation practice.

Perspectives

Throughout this manuscript we provide a comprehensive neurocognitive framework outlining the central role of spontaneous thought processes in the meditative cycle, however many outstanding questions remain. While research findings suggest that accumulative meditation practice reduces the frequency of spontaneous thought episodes ( Brandmeyer & Delorme, 2018 ; Wenk-Sormaz, 2005 ; Zanesco et al., 2016 ), it has yet to be established whether reductions in mind wandering reflect the meta-cognitive accuracy cultivated during practice, or an increased allocation of attentional resources (improved sustained attention), or both. It may also be the case that meditation practice facilitates the unification of various attentional mechanisms so as to further mitigate mind-wandering. It is our perspective that it is most likely the case that meditative experience enhances metacognitive skills from the onset increasing an individual’s propensity to detect spontaneous thought. This would occur through the initial and repetitious «flexing» of the cognitive activity associated with the meditative cycle, with an emphasis placed on detecting when attention has drifted away from the meditative focus and bringing it back to the object (see Fig. 2 ). With accumulative practice this leads to earlier detection and sensitivity to the occurrence of mind wandering, eventually facilitating lower level neurogenesis and neuroplasticity that translate to faculties such as a the capacity for longer periods of sustained attention.

One way of deciphering the differences between this meta-cognition vs. improved attention regulation question would be to use both self- (assessing the meta-awareness of mind wandering) and probe-caught (reflecting a more direct measure of on- or off-task measure of sustained attention) experiential sampling methods. Several studies have effectively implemented this methodology in a normal population to illuminate the relationship between mind-wandering and meta-awareness. This approach was initially used to examine mind-wandering while reading and revealed that whereas participants caught themselves mind-wandering roughly 4 times in a 45 min period, they were regularly caught mind-wandering in about 15% of experience sampling probes ( Franklin, Smallwood, & Schooler, 2011 ; Unsworth & McMillan, 2013 ). This type of paradigm could be applied to meditators, and a regression analysis could be used to investigate whether the impact of years of experience influence changes in meta awareness and measures of sustained attention.

It is also important to address how using experiential sampling methods may influence the depth and quality of meditation practice in experimental settings. Interviews of meditators in experimental contexts indicate that the majority of participants are unable to experience particularly ‘deep’ meditative states, however advanced practitioners report reduced disruption from the experience sampling probes compared to novices ( Brandmeyer & Delorme, 2018 ). However, all meditators in the study experienced a progressive ‘increase in the depth’ of their meditation over time suggesting they were progressively better at engaging their meditation practice and performing the task simultaneously (there was a 10 min period of training prior to the beginning of the task). It has also been argued that all of the aforementioned methods of measurement predominantly address the contents of thought at a specific point in time, but elucidate very little regarding the neural dynamics leading up to the measurement of a given mental state (i.e., mind wandering or meditation; Smallwood & Schooler, 2015 ). Thus, nuanced methodologies such as machine learning and online classification are necessary to understand how mental states are related and evolve over time, without having to rely on subjective first person reporting ( Girn et al., 2017 ).

Another open research question is to determine to what degree different types of meditation practice influence the awareness, duration, and frequency of mind-wandering episodes. Although meditation research is a relatively established scientific domain within both academic and clinical contexts, as mentioned, much debate regarding incompatible definitions and conceptions of mindfulness and meditation remain within both academic and traditional Buddhist contexts ( Brandmeyer, Delorme, & Wahbeh, 2019 ; Dunne, 2015 ; Sharf, 2015 ; Van Dam et al., 2018 ). Similarly, the manner in which mind-wandering is defined directly influences the corresponding neuroimaging data, thus future research should aim to differentiate the distinctive forms of spontaneous cognition at both a behavioral, phenomenological, and neural level ( Fox & Christoff, 2018 ). Lastly, refined phenomenological research has yet to explore whether meditation experience exerts a preferential influence on the real time dynamics of thought content, such as the orientation (past, present, future) and the valence (pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant) of spontaneous thought processes during meditation, as well as during daily life. These findings would be particularly beneficial in therapeutic intervention trajectories, as well as in informing the broader translational and clinical applications.

One translational application of this intersection of meditation and mind wandering research includes the development of closed-loop neurofeedback paradigms. Furthermore, protocols that implement novel features including the covert detection of mind-wandering during meditation and alternative modalities of sensory feedback such as haptic feedback (as opposed to auditory or visual feedback) should be explored, as they may enable practitioners to remain in a relatively natural meditative state. Methodological approaches implementing closed-loop neurofeedback and machine learning for training meditation and detecting mind wandering have already emerged ( Bixler & D’Mello, 2016 ; Faber, Bixler, & D’Mello, 2018 ; Hutt et al., 2019 ; Krasich et al., 2018 ). While no definitive scientific consensus has been reached in terms of identifying generalizable and reliable neural markers that can serve to index meditative states and depth for neurofeedback training purposes, our previous research ( Brandmeyer, 2017 ) found behavioral improvements on a working memory task after only 8 sessions of FM theta closed-loop neurofeedback wherein subjects applied focused attention meditation instructions while upregulating frontal midline theta. Additional research by Lutterveld and Brewer (2017) found a high moment-to-moment correspondence between neurofeedback source-localized gamma activity from the PCC and subjective experience of effortless awareness. Another recent study found that when patients engaged in the Muse meditation neurofeedback (a wearable EEG head-band device and application that implements proprietary algorithms) for 20 minutes daily during the period ranging from breast cancer diagnosis until 3 months after surgical treatment, they observed reduced fatigue and reduced stress as well as an improved quality of life ( Millstine et al., 2019 ; Bhayee et al., 2016 ). Other methodological approaches such as the use of pupillometry and eye tracking during sustained visual attention tasks, the use of respiration and heart-rate variability (HRV) for assessing the down regulation of the sympathetic nervous system. New and novel methods that examine the causal role of brain regions, such as the lateral PFC, MCC, dorsal ACC, and PCC should all be considered potential candidates of feedback based on the literature presented throughout this manuscript, as these regions are heavily implicated in the meditative cycle and hold promise as candidates for future closed-loop neuro- and biofeedback protocols and applications.

Conclusions

Individual differences in executive functions and cognitive control have been shown to predict well-being across a broad array of personal, academic, and professional domains ( Hirsh & Inzlicht, 2010 ), with impaired cognitive control (i.e., impaired attention and emotion regulation) considered to be the hallmark predictor of clinical disorders such as ADHD, obsessive compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, depression, and anxiety ( Cho, Konecky, & Carter, 2006 ; Friedman et al., 2007 ; LeMoult & Gotlib, 2019 ; Mazaheri et al., 2014 ; Snyder, Kaiser, Warren, & Heller, 2015 ; Yordanova, Kolev, & Rothenberger, 2013 ). The findings presented throughout this manuscript provide a comprehensive theoretical framework showcasing the processes underlying self-generated thought and the key role that metacognitive awareness plays in enhancing cognitive regulation and which may serve to potentially buffer individuals against a wide array of cognitive deficiencies that arise from the inability to regulate self-generated thought content (i.e. rumination, habitual thinking). Many of the benefits resulting from contemplative practice are likely the result of an increased engagement with the neural circuity underlying the regulation of attention, emotions, cognition, somatosensory processing, and metacognition. Here, we highlighted how spontaneous thought processes are likely mediated by brain networks functionally and structurally linked to the practice of meditation, having focused on broadly distributed networks including the DMN, fPCN, DAN, and the salience network. We explored the key mechanisms by which meditation appears to modulate attention and sensory perception, meta-awareness, perceptual coupling, and decoupling, all of which are directly implicated in the regulation, maintenance, content, valence, and overall generation of spontaneous thought processes, broader cognitive functioning, and well-being.

Akwnowledgments

This work was supported by grants from the Agence Nationale pour la Recherche (ANR-12-JSH2-0009), the BIAL foundation (BIAL-08-162), and a T32 award (T32 AT00399) granted at the University of California San Francisco, Osher Center for Integrative Medicine from the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health of the National Institutes of Health. The authors wish to thank Cédric Cannard and Phillippe Goldin for their contributions towards the manuscript.

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“Tracks of the Wandering Mind”: Poem Analysis

Within Tracks of the Wandering Mind the author expresses the feeling of a deep longing for something unreachable and different from the surroundings. The protagonist is linking the things they would want to experience and the places they would want to see with trains, and they also mention railways. It leads to the conclusion that the poem is located somewhere at the train station, or simply at some part of the railway.

The major part of the poem focuses on the protagonist’s dreams of running away towards something new, something that could evoke pure emotions in them. The speaker is almost screaming with despair and sorrow at the beginning. These dreams and hopes to escape are hurtful and sad for the protagonist, as it is something they know they would never have. However, towards the end of the poem the atmosphere of craving for the unreachable created by the protagonist changes, as they state that they “bid adieu to their dreams of escape”. The attitude of the speaker loses saturation throughout the poem, only to appear completely desperate and hopeless at the very end. It gives the impression of giving up on their dreams, and letting go of the only emotion the speaker was feeling – sadness.

The strongest aspect of the poem is the dramatic shift from expressing the thoughts and feelings of a speaker to the train passing by. It creates a symbolic ending, which could be interpreted in different ways. The end of the poem might be interpreted as a new beginning, as the protagonist chooses to stop focusing on the miseries and give a chance to their actual surroundings, to try to live in a moment. It is highlighted by the fact that the only time a speaker’s thoughts were replaced by actions within their surroundings were shown in the last sentence. However, at the same time it might be interpreted as a complete loss of hope for anything in life, as the last feelings abandon the speaker, and they rather feel like a soulless body.

In order to reach its full potential, this poem should have been focused more on bringing out the topics of symbolism. The train acts as an excellent example of a symbolic detail; however, additional elements would create a multifaceted expression. Finally, the links among the elements of symbolism would create an impression of a web with layers of meaning, which would make it more relatable to the readers and more intriguing to interpret.

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