Description
Where do spontaneous thoughts come from? It may be surprising that the seemingly straightforward answers "from the mind" or "from the brain" are in fact an incredibly recent understanding of the origins of spontaneous thought. For nearly all of human history, our thoughts - especially the most sudden, insightful, and important - were almost universally ascribed to divine or other external sources. Only in the past few centuries have we truly taken responsibility for their own mental content, and finally localized thought to the central nervous system - laying the foundations for a protoscience of spontaneous thought. But enormous questions still loom: what, exactly, is spontaneous thought? Why does our brain engage in spontaneous forms of thinking, and when is this most likely to occur? And perhaps the question most interesting and accessible from a scientific perspective: how does the brain generate and evaluate its own spontaneous creations?Spontaneous thought includes our daytime fantasies and mind-wandering; the flashes of insight and inspiration familiar to the artist, scientist, and inventor; and the nighttime visions we call dreams.This Handbook brings together views from neuroscience, psychology, philosophy, phenomenology, history, education, contemplative traditions, and clinical practice to begin to address the ubiquitous but poorly understood mental phenomena that we collectively call 'spontaneous thought.'In studying such an abstruse and seemingly impractical subject, we should remember that our capacity for spontaneity, originality, and creativity defines us as a species - and as individuals. Spontaneous forms of thought enable us to transcend not only the here and now of perceptual experience, but also the bonds of our deliberately-controlled and goal-directed cognition; they allow the space for us to be other than who we are, and for our minds to think beyond the limitations of our current viewpoints and beliefs.
Table of Contents
About the EditorsContributorsPart I: Introduction and Overview1. Introduction: Toward an Interdisciplinary Science of Spontaneous ThoughtKieran C. R. Fox and Kalina ChristoffPart II: Theoretical Perspectives2. Why the Mind Wanders: How Spontaneous Thought's Default Variability May Support Episodic Efficiency and Semantic OptimizationCaitlin Mills, Arianne Herrera-Bennett, Myrthe Faber, and Kalina Christoff3. An Exploration/Exploitation Tradeoff Between Mind-Wandering and Goal-Directed ThinkingChandra S. Sripada4. When the Absence of Reasoning Breeds Meaning: Metacognitive Appraisals of Spontaneous ThoughtCarey K. Morewedge and Daniella M. Kupor5. The Mind Wanders with Ease: Low Motivational Intensity is an Essential Quality of Mind-WanderingDylan Stan and Kalina Christoff6. How does the brain's spontaneous activity generate our thoughts? The spatiotemporal theory of task-unrelated thought (STTT)Georg Northoff7. Investigating the elements of thought: Towards a component process account of spontaneous CognitionJonathan Smallwood, Daniel Margulies, Boris C. Bernhardt, and Elizabeth JeffriesPart III: Philosophical, Evolutionary, and Historical Perspectives8. The Philosophy of Mind-WanderingZachary C. Irving and Evan Thompson9. Why is mind wandering interesting for philosophers?Thomas Metzinger10. Spontaneity in Evolution, Learning, Creativity, and Free Will: Spontaneous Variation in Four Selectionist PhenomenaDean Keith Simonton11. How Does the Waking and Sleeping Brain Produce Spontaneous Thought and Imagery, and Why?John S. Antrobus12. Spontaneous Thinking in Creative Lives: Building Connections Between Science and HistoryAlex Soojung-Kim PangPart IV: Mind-Wandering and Daydreaming13. Functional neuroanatomy of spontaneous thoughtJessica R. Andrews-Hanna, Zachary C. Irving, Kieran C. R. Fox, R. Nathan Spreng, and Kalina Christoff14. Neural Origins of Self-Generated Cognition: Insights from Intracranial Electrical Stimulation and Recordings in HumansKieran C. R. Fox15. Mind-wandering and self-referential thoughtArnaud D'Argembeau16. Phenomenological Properites of Mind-Wandering and Daydreaming: A Historical Overview and Functional CorrelatesDavid Stawarczyk17. Spontaneous thought and goal pursuit: From functions such as planning to dysfunctions such as ruminationEric Klinger, Ernst H. W. Koster, and Igor Marchetti18. Unraveling What's On Our Minds: How Different Types of Mind-Wandering Affect Cognition and BehaviorClaire M. Zedelius and Jonathan W. Schooler19. Mind-wandering and events in the external world: Electrophysiological evidence for attentional DecouplingJulia W. Y. Kam and Todd C. Handy20. Mind-wandering in educational settingsJeffrey D. Wammes, Paul Seli, and Daniel SmilekPart V: Creativity and Insight21. Interacting Brain Networks Underlying Creative Cognition and Artistic PerformanceRoger E. Beaty and Rex E. Jung22. Spontaneous and controlled processes in creative cognitionMathias Benedek and Emanuel Jauk23. Wandering and Direction in Creative ProductionCharles Dobson24. Flow as spontaneous thought: Insight and implicit learningJohn Vervaeke, Leo Ferraro, and Arianne Herrera-Bennett25. Internal Orientation in Aesthetic ExperienceOshin Vartanian26. Neuropsychopharmacology of Flexible and Creative ThinkingDavid Q. BeversdorfPart VI: Sleep, Dreaming, and Memory27. Dreaming is an intensified form of mind-wandering, based in augmented portions of the default networkG. William Domhoff28. Neural Correlates of Self-Generated Imagery and Cognition Throughout the Sleep CycleKieran C. R. Fox and Manesh Girn29. Spontaneous thought, insight, and control in lucid dreamsJennifer M. Windt and Ursula Voss30. Microdream neurophenomenology: A paradigm for dream neuroscienceTore A. Nielsen31. Sleep paralysis: Phenomenology, Neurophysiology, and TreatmentElizaveta Solomonova32. Dreaming and Waking Thought as a Reflection of Memory ConsolidationErin J. Wamsley33. Involuntary Autobiographical Memories: Spontaneous Recollections of the PastJohn H. MacePart VII: Clinical Contexts, Contemplative Traditions, and Altered States of Consciousness34. Potential Clinical Benefits and Risks of Spontaneous Thought: Unconstrained Attention as a Way Into and a Way Out of Psychological DisharmonyDylan Stan and Kalina Christoff35. Candidate Mechanisms of Spontaneous Cognition as Revealed By Dementia SyndromesClaire O'Callaghan and Muireann Irish36. Rumination is a Sticky Form of Spontaneous ThoughtElizabeth DuPre and R. Nathan Spreng37. Pain and Spontaneous ThoughtAaron Kucyi38. Spontaneous thought in contemplative traditionsHalvor Eifring39. Catching the Wandering Mind: Meditation as a Window into Spontaneous ThoughtWendy Hasenkamp40. Spontaneous Mental Experiences in Extreme and Unusual EnvironmentsPeter Suedfeld, A. Dennis Rank, and Marek Malus41. Cultural neurophenomenology of psychedelic thought: Guiding the "unconstrained" mind through ritual and contextMichael Lifshitz, Eli Sheiner, and Laurence Kirmayer
