Out of the blue: understanding abrupt and wayward transitions in thought using probability and predictive processing
Open accessAbstract
Thoughts that appear to come to us ‘out of the blue’ or ‘out of nowhere’ are a familiar aspect of mental experience. Such thoughts tend to elicit feelings of surprise and spontaneity. Although we are beginning to understand the neural processes that underlie the arising of such thoughts, little is known about what accounts for their peculiar phenomenology. Here, we focus on one central aspect of this phenomenology—the experience of surprise at their occurrence, as it relates to internal probabilistic predictions regarding mental states. We introduce a distinction between two phenomenologically different types of transitions in thought content: (i) abrupt transitions , which occur at surprising times but lead to unsurprising thought content, and (ii) wayward transitions , which occur at surprising times and also lead to surprising thought content. We examine these two types of transitions using a novel approach that combines probabilistic and predictive processing concepts and principles. We employ two different probability metrics—transition and occurrence probability—to characterize and differentiate between abrupt and wayward transitions. We close by discussing some potentially beneficial ways in which these two kinds of transitions in thought content may contribute to mental function, and how they may be implemented at the neural level. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation’.
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The activation of weak associations may be a critical component of creative, flexible, and divergent thinking.
“To the contrary, the activation of weak associations may be a critical component of creative, flexible, and divergent thinking [61–63].”
From Constructive episodic simulation in dreams (2022) · cites this paper as [62]
In “Surprising thoughts: a glitch or a feature?” (page unavailable), the paper suggests that wayward transitions broaden mental search to include thoughts with low baseline probability. This supports the idea that otherwise neglected thoughts can be useful, but it does not specifically connect activation of weak associations to creative, flexible, or divergent thinking. (LLM, conf=0.78)
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- Authors
- Mills, C., Zamani, A., White, R., & Christoff, K.
- Affiliations
- University of New Hampshire (US)
- University of British Columbia (CA)
- Department of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
- Venue
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences
- Publisher
- The Royal Society
- Published
- 2020-12-14
- Volume
- 376
- Issue
- 1817
- Pages
- 20190692
- ISSN
- 0962-8436 (ISSN-L)
- 1471-2970
- PMC
- PMC7741073
- OpenAlex
- W3113280510
- Cited by
- 27
- References
- 61
- Citations by year
- 2026: 3 · 2025: 4 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 7 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 1 · 2020: 1
- FWCI
- 1.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- hybrid
- doi.org
- Locations
- Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- Europe PMC (PubMed Central) (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed Central (publishedVersion, cc-by)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (MOP-115197)
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (RGPIN 327317-11)
- Topics
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Embodied and Extended Cognition
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Experimental and Cognitive Psychology › Philosophy and Theoretical Science
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Cognitive Science and Education Research
- Keywords
- spontaneous thought, abrupt transitions, surprise, predictive processing, probabilistic forecasting, transition probabilities, probability of occurrence, phenomenology of thought
- MeSH terms
- Attention, Cognition, Humans, Probability
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