Ventromedial prefrontal damage reduces mind-wandering and biases its temporal focus
Open accessAbstract
Mind-wandering, an ubiquitous expression of humans' mental life, reflects a drift of attention away from the current task towards self-generated thoughts, and has been associated with activity in the brain default network. To date, however, little is understood about the contribution of individual nodes of this network to mind-wandering. Here, we investigated whether the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) is critically involved in mind-wandering, by studying the propensity to mind-wander in patients with lesion to the vmPFC (vmPFC patients), control patients with lesions not involving the vmPFC, and healthy individuals. Participants performed three tasks varying in cognitive demands while their thoughts were periodically sampled, and a self-report scale of daydreaming in daily life. vmPFC patients exhibited reduced mind-wandering rates across tasks, and claimed less frequent daydreaming, than both healthy and brain-damaged controls. vmPFC damage reduced off-task thoughts related to the future, while it promoted those about the present. These results indicate that vmPFC critically supports mind-wandering, possibly by helping to construct future-related scenarios and thoughts that have the potential to draw attention inward, away from the ongoing tasks.
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There is a strong association between reduced mind wandering and left AG lesions.
“which revealed a strong association between reduced mind wandering and left AG lesions.”
From 20 years of the default mode network: A review and synthesis. (2023) · cites this paper as [70]
The Participants section reports angular gyrus damage in only one control patient, without identifying it as left-sided. The Mind-wandering and Discussion sections instead associate reduced mind-wandering with vmPFC lesions; the brain-damaged control group did not differ significantly from healthy controls. (LLM, conf=0.88)
Checked by a reasoning model — may be wrong.
Experimental — accuracy not yet measuredLesion studies suggest a causal role for the DMN in mind wandering.
“Lesion studies suggest a causal role for the DMN in this process.”
From 20 years of the default mode network: A review and synthesis. (2023) · cites this paper as [70]
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Anhedonia in Semantic Dementia—Exploring Right Hemispheric Contributions to the Loss of Pleasure
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The Critical Role of the Hippocampus in Mind Wandering
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Mind wandering in schizophrenia: A thought-sampling study
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Self-citationComputational constraints on the associative recall of spatial scenes
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Taking time to compose thoughts with prefrontal schemata
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Self-citationMind-wandering in people with hippocampal damage
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Navigating through the ebbs and flows of language
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Working memory capacity predicts focus back effort under different task demands
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Face the future! How the self and time shape mind-wandering
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Neuropsychology and Lesion Models
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vmPFC damage reduces mind-wandering, but not other classes of off-task thought
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Mind-wandering and other lapses
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- Authors
- Bertossi, E., & Ciaramelli, E.
- Affiliations
- University of Bologna (IT)
- ORCID
- Ciaramelli, Elisa
- Venue
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2016-07-21
- Volume
- 11
- Issue
- 11
- Pages
- 1783-1791
- ISSN
- 1749-5016 (ISSN-L)
- 1749-5024
- PMC
- PMC5091689
- OpenAlex
- W2504662245
- Cited by
- 82
- References
- 65
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 11 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 5 · 2021: 8 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 10 · 2018: 12 · 2017: 6
- FWCI
- 5.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Licence
- Locations
- Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience (publishedVersion, cc-by-nc)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Archivio istituzionale della ricerca (Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna) (submittedVersion, cc-by-nc-nd)
- HighWire Press Open Archive (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Mind wandering and attention
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Cognitive Functions and Memory
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Sleep and Wakefulness Research
- Keywords
- mind wandering, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, default mode network, daydreaming, temporal focus, off-task thought, attention, brain lesions, cognitive demand
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Attention, Brain Damage, Chronic, Brain Mapping, Intracranial Aneurysm, Dominance, Cerebral, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Middle Aged, Nerve Net, Thinking, Prefrontal Cortex, Aneurysm, Ruptured, Stroke
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