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Left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex supports context-dependent prioritisation of off-task thought

Adam Turnbull,Hao-ting Wang,Charlotte Murphy,N. Ho,Xiuyi Wang,Mladen Sormaz,T. Karapanagiotidis,R. Leech,B. Bernhardt,D. Margulies,D. Vatansever,E. Jefferies,J. Smallwood

Published 2019 in Nature Communications

ABSTRACT

When environments lack compelling goals, humans often let their minds wander to thoughts with greater personal relevance; however, we currently do not understand how this context-dependent prioritisation process operates. Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) maintains goal representations in a context-dependent manner. Here, we show this region is involved in prioritising off-task thought in an analogous way. In a whole brain analysis we established that neural activity in DLPFC is high both when ‘on-task’ under demanding conditions and ‘off-task’ in a non-demanding task. Furthermore, individuals who increase off-task thought when external demands decrease, show lower correlation between neural signals linked to external tasks and lateral regions of the DMN within DLPFC, as well as less cortical grey matter in regions sensitive to these external task relevant signals. We conclude humans prioritise daydreaming when environmental demands decrease by aligning cognition with their personal goals using DLPFC. The authors show that the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is involved in both on-task thought during increased environmental demands, and off-task thought during decreased demand–suggesting a role for the DLPFC in prioritising goals in a context-dependent manner.

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