Mind wandering "Ahas" versus mindful reasoning: alternative routes to creative solutions.

Based on mixed results linking both mindfulness and its opposing construct mind wandering to enhanced creativity, we predicted that the relationship between mindfulness and creativity might depend on whether creative problems are approached through analytic strategy or through "insight" (i.e., sudden awareness of a solution). Study 1 investigated the relationship between trait mindfulness and compound remote associates problem solving as a function of participants' self-reported approach to each problem. The results revealed a negative relationship between mindfulness and problem-solving overall. However, more detailed analysis revealed that mindfulness was associated with impaired problem solving when approaching problems with insight, but increased problem solving when using analysis. In Study 2, we manipulated participants' problem-solving approach through instructions. We again found a negative relationship between mindfulness and creative performance in general, however, more mindful participants again performed better when instructed to approach problems analytically

The Richness of Inner Experience: Relating Styles of Daydreaming to Creative Processes.

Psychologists have long hypothesized that daydreaming (i.e., engaging in stimulus-independent, task-unrelated thoughts and images) may facilitate creativity, but evidence for this hypothesis has been mixed. We propose that, to fully understand the relationship between daydreaming and creativity, it is essential to distinguish between different creative processes as well as between alternative styles of daydreaming. A prominent distinction in creativity research is that between analytic problem solving, which involves incremental and largely conscious processes, and insight, which is characterized by the spontaneity with which an idea springs to mind. In this aspect, insight resembles daydreaming. Indeed, recent evidence has linked daydreaming to creative performance. But like creativity, daydreaming is a multifaceted concept. Daydreams vary in style and content, a fact that is receiving little attention in contemporary research. Not all kinds of daydreaming are likely to have the same effects on creativity. We discuss different factors prevalent in people's daydreaming, such as mood, attentional focus, and intentionality, and consider how these factors may be related to creative processes. We further discuss implications for ways to enhance creativity through deliberate daydreaming practice

Pushing the Limits: Cognitive, Affective, and Neural Plasticity Revealed by an Intensive Multifaceted Intervention.

Scientific understanding of how much the adult brain can be shaped by experience requires examination of how multiple influences combine to elicit cognitive, affective, and neural plasticity. Using an intensive multifaceted intervention, we discovered that substantial and enduring improvements can occur in parallel across multiple cognitive and neuroimaging measures in healthy young adults. The intervention elicited substantial improvements in physical health, working memory, standardized test performance, mood, self-esteem, self-efficacy, mindfulness, and life satisfaction. Improvements in mindfulness were associated with increased degree centrality of the insula, greater functional connectivity between insula and somatosensory cortex, and reduced functional connectivity between posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and somatosensory cortex. Improvements in working memory and reading comprehension were associated with increased degree centrality of a region within the middle temporal gyrus (MTG) that was extensively and predominately integrated with the executive control network. The scope and magnitude of the observed improvements represent the most extensive demonstration to date of the considerable human capacity for change. These findings point to higher limits for rapid and concurrent cognitive, affective, and neural plasticity than is widely assumed

The Relationship between Resilience and Mental Health: the Mediating Effect of Positive Emotions

To investigate the relationship of resilience, positive emotions and mental health, and the relationship of resilience, positive emotion and three sub-dimensions of mental health: self-affirmation, depression and anxiety. In this study, the existing cross-sectional data, select the Beijing Forestry University data as samples. In this study, questionnaire survey a random sample of 199 undergraduate students of Beijing Forestry University, they uniform application three Scale Surveying, PANAS, CD-RISC, GHQ-20. According from the study, (1) resilience, positive mood and general health are related where resilience and positive emotions between the resilience. General psychological health, positive emotions and general mental health?it is positively correlated. (2) Resilience and self-affirmation exists, positive correlation with depression and anxiety, respectively negative correlation. Between positive emotions and self-affirmation the positive correlation with anxiety negative correlation. (3) Part mediating effect of positive emotions exist between resilience and self-affirmation, resilience can be made to self-affirmation prediction coefficient from 0.042 down to 0.036. Therefore, this study concluded that resilience undergraduates can have an impact on mental health through the intermediary variable positive emotions

Research on the Relationship between Positive Emotions, Psychological Capital and Job Burnout in Enterprises’ Employees: Based on the Broaden-and-Build Theory of Positive Emotions

At present, the research on the positive emotions of employees in management scholars is a little inadequate. This study uses a questionnaire survey to measure 385 employees from Chinese Enterprises, focusing on the relationship between positive emotions and job burnout, and emphatically examines the mediating effect of psychological capital. The results show that positive emotions of employees are positively correlated with psychological capital and negatively correlated with job burnout. Psychological capital plays a complete mediator between positive emotions and job burnout. This study has some guiding significance for the construction of healthy society and organization

The Decoupled Mind : Mind-wandering Disrupts Cortical Phase-locking to Perceptual Events

The mind flows in a "stream of consciousness," which often neglects immediate sensory input in favor of focusing on intrinsic, self-generated thoughts or images. Although considerable research has documented the disruptive influences of task-unrelated thought for perceptual processing and task performance, the brain dynamics associated with these phenomena are not well understood. Here we investigate the possibility, suggested by several convergent lines of research, that task-unrelated thought is associated with a reduction in the trial-to-trial phase consistency of the oscillatory neural signal in response to perceptual input. Using an experience sampling paradigm coupled with continuous high-density electroencephalography, we observed that task-unrelated thought was associated with a reduction of the P1 ERP, replicating prior observations that mind-wandering is accompanied by a reduction of the brain-evoked response to sensory input. Time-frequency analysis of the oscillatory neural response revealed a decrease in theta-band cortical phase-locking, which peaked over parietal scalp regions. Furthermore, we observed that task-unrelated thought impacted the oscillatory mode of the brain during the initiation of a task-relevant action, such that more cortical processing was required to meet task demands. Together, these findings document that the attenuation of perceptual processing that occurs during task-unrelated thought is associated with a reduction in the temporal fidelity with which the brain responds to a stimulus and suggest that increased neural processing may be required to recouple attention to a task. More generally, these data provide novel confirmatory evidence for the mechanisms through which attentional states facilitate the neural processing of sensory input

Dehorning the Darwinian Dilemma for Normative Realism

Normative realists tend to consider evolutionary debunking arguments as posing epistemological challenges to their view. By understanding Sharon Street's 'Darwinian dilemma' argument in this way, they have overlooked and left unanswered her unique scientific challenge to normative realism. This paper counters Street's scientific challenge and shows that normative realism is compatible with evolutionary views of human evaluative judgment. After presenting several problems that her Adaptive Link Account (ALA) of evaluative judgments faces, I outline and defend an evolutionary byproduct perspective on evaluative judgment. I then argue that a consideration of levels of analysis in biological-behavioral explanation suggests that the realist who adopts the byproduct perspective I outline is not at a prima facie disadvantage to the normative anti-realist on grounds of parsimony. This perspective, I suggest, can enable normative realists to answer evolutionary challenges to their view

Insulation for Daydreams: A Role for Tonic Norepinephrine in the Facilitation of Internally Guided Thought

Although consciousness can be brought to bear on both perceptual and internally generated information, little is known about how these different cognitive modes are coordinated. Here we show that between-participant variance in thoughts unrelated to the task being performed (known as task unrelated thought, TUT) is associated with longer response times (RT) when target presentation occurs during periods when baseline Pupil Diameter (PD) is increased. As behavioral interference due to high baseline PD can reflect increased tonic activity in the norepinephrine system (NE), these results might implicate high tonic NE activity in the facilitation of TUTs. Based on these findings, it is hypothesised that high tonic mode NE leads to a generalised de-amplification of task relevant information that prioritses internally generated thought and insulates it from the potentially disruptive events taking place in the external environment

Regional White Matter Variation Associated with Domain-specific Metacognitive Accuracy

The neural mechanisms that mediate metacognitive ability (the capacity to accurately reflect on one's own cognition and experience) remain poorly understood. An important question is whether metacognitive capacity is a domain-general skill supported by a core neuroanatomical substrate or whether regionally specific neural structures underlie accurate reflection in different cognitive domains. Providing preliminary support for the latter possibility, recent findings have shown that individual differences in metacognitive ability in the domains of memory and perception are related to variation in distinct gray matter volume and resting-state functional connectivity. The current investigation sought to build on these findings by evaluating how metacognitive ability in these domains is related to variation in white matter microstructure. We quantified metacognitive ability across memory and perception domains and used diffusion spectrum imaging to examine the relation between high-resolution measurements of white matter microstructure and individual differences in metacognitive accuracy in each domain. We found that metacognitive accuracy for perceptual decisions and memory were uncorrelated across individuals and that metacognitive accuracy in each domain was related to variation in white matter microstructure in distinct brain areas. Metacognitive accuracy for perceptual decisions was associated with increased diffusion anisotropy in white matter underlying the ACC, whereas metacognitive accuracy for memory retrieval was associated with increased diffusion anisotropy in the white matter extending into the inferior parietal lobule. Together, these results extend previous findings linking metacognitive ability in the domains of perception and memory to variation in distinct brain structures and connections