Mind Wandering During Incubation Period And Creativity Problem Solving:The Effects Of Executive Control And Its Neural Basis

Mind wandering is the conscious state that the mental contents are occupied with internal information,independent from the events here and now.After reviewing the studies of mind wandering contents and neural activity,researchers inferred that mind wandering can facilitate problem solving and future planning.One of the potential positive function of mind wandering is that it can facilitate creativity problem solving.And individual difference of working memory capacity(WMC)is important for people whether creativity problem solving can be facilitated by mind wandering or not.The dual pathway to creativity model argues that creativity is a function of cognitive flexibility and cognitive persistence,and situational variables may influence creativity either through their effects on one of these two ways,or on both.Based on the characteristics of mind wandering,it may facilitate creativity through its effect on cognitive flexibility.Because the executive control may inhibit cognitive flexibility,individuals with lower working memory capacity whose executive control are lower may be more benefited from mind wandering during creativity problem solving.In this study,we examined whether individuals with lower working memory capacity can be more benefited from mind wandering or not and explored the neural activity with functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI).We focused on two main questions:(1)Whether low working memory capacity group can be more benefited from the process of mind wandering compared with high working memory capacity group;(2)The association between mind wandering neural activities and creativity problem solving.We used an incubation paradigm to assess whether performance on creativity can be facilitated by mind wandering and selected two different working memory capacity groups to assess whether low working memory capacity group can be more benefited from the process of mind wandering compared with high working memory capacity group.Studyl explored the questions in two ways:the behavior research which explored the relationship between mind wandering and creative problem solving by behavior data and the fMRI research which explored the association between neural activity of mind wandering during incubation periods and creative problem solving.In study2,we used resting-state functional connectivity(RSFC)to explore the association between RSFC and the effects of mind wandering on creative problem solving.Main conclusions as follows:(1)During the low cognitive demanding task,all participates experienced more mind wandering.Improved performance of low working memory capacity group after the low demanding incubation period is better than high working memory capacity group.We inferred that low WMC individuals can be benefit from the mind wandering better than high WMC individuals during the creativity problem solving.(2)Resting state functional connectivity analysis showed that for low working memory capacity group,the functional connectivity between dorsal anterior cingulate cortex which is one of the core regions of executive control network and medial prefrontal cortex which is one of the core regions of participating mind wandering is negatively correlation with improved performance after the low cognitive demanding incubation period.