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Science 6 July 2007:
Vol. 317. no. 5834, p. 43
DOI: 10.1126/science.1140801
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Technical Comments

Comment on "Wandering Minds: The Default Network and Stimulus-Independent Thought"

Sam J. Gilbert1*, Iroise Dumontheil2, Jon S. Simons3, Chris D. Frith4 and Paul W. Burgess1

1 Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience and Department of Psychology, University College London, London, UK.
2 Medical Research Council Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, UK.
3 Behavioral and Clinical Neuroscience Institute, Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK.
4 Wellcome Department of Imaging Neuroscience, Institute of Neurology, University College London, London, UK.


Figure 1 Fig. 1. Brain regions showing greater signal during stimulus-oriented attention than stimulus-independent attention (yellow), and those showing a significant correlation with reaction time (RT) in a separate simple-RT baseline task (red), at the conservative threshold of P < 0.05 corrected for whole-brain volume. The mPFC was more active in stimulus-oriented than stimulus-independent conditions; an overlapping region was most active on those trials of the baseline task with fastest RTs (peak co-ordinate: 2, 62, 4), suggesting a functional role in performance of the task. These results are inconsistent with the hypothesis that activity in this part of the mPFC reflects stimulus-independent mind-wandering. Adapted from figure 4 in (3). [View Larger Version of this Image (46K GIF file)]
 

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Science. ISSN 0036-8075 (print), 1095-9203 (online)