On the coupling and decoupling of mind wandering and perception: a shared metabolism account

Mind wandering (MW) has been associated with reduced responsiveness to external stimuli ("perceptual decoupling"). Conversely, increased perceptual demands of a task result in reduced MW. Here we propose a neurobiological account attributing the mutually-limiting relationship of MW and perception to brain-wide limits on cerebral metabolism. Since overall cerebral metabolism is known to remain constant, despite increased mental task demands, we tested whether increased perceptual processing load in a visual task will result in reduced oxygen metabolism in MW-related medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) regions.

We used broadband near-infrared spectroscopy to measure oxidation states of the cytochrome-c-oxidase enzyme (oxCCO), an intracellular marker of metabolism, in mPFC while sampling participants' MW experiences during their performance of a visual task of either low (feature search) or high(conjunction search) perceptual load.

Increased perceptual load in the task resulted in reduced oxCCO signal in mPFC regions related to MW reports. High perceptual load was also found to specifically suppress detailed (and hence more metabolism-demanding) rather than vague MW.

Overall, the results support a shared metabolism account of the relationship between MW and perception and demonstrate that attentional-regulation of metabolism only supports ongoing detailed MW when perceptual processing demands are low.