Meta-awareness, mind-wandering, and the control of ‘default’ external and internal orientations of attention

The “default mode” of cognition refers to the tendency to simulate internal experiences, rather than attending to external events in the moment. But in some contexts, external focus can become captivating enough to act as the default mode. To explore the relationship between prepotent internal and external default modes, we measured brain activity in forty participants using fMRI. Naturalistic movie clips were viewed, each one four times in sequence. When subjects were asked to focus attention on the videos, more mind-wandering events (distractions from the externally-focused task) occurred as the videos became less interesting with each repetition, and also when less engaging videos were presented. When subjects were asked to focus internally on breathing, more mind-wandering events (distractions from the internally-focused task) occurred when videos were most interesting (on the first repetition) and when more engaging videos were presented. In the fMRI data, inter-subject correlation, within-subject correlation, and GLM analyses found similar fronto-parietal networks engaged in transitions between default-controlled states regardless of the internal-external distinction, indicating more overlap in internal-external processing than previously assumed. We suggest that whether the default state is internal or external, and whether the sources that disrupt it are internal or external, depend on context.