Extending homeostasis to thought dynamics for a comprehensive explanation of mind-wandering.

ABSTRACT: Our thoughts are inherently dynamic, often wandering far from the current situation. Mind-wandering (MW), which is these thought transitions, is crucial for understanding the nature of human thought. Although previous research has identified various factors influencing MW, a comprehensive framework integrating these findings remains absent. Here, we propose that homeostasis has the potential to explain MW and validate the idea through simulations by replicating previous findings. We employed a homeostatic reinforcement learning model where independent drives for the task and others were assigned, and drive reduction became a reward and trained under sustained attention to the response task. To demonstrate that HRL agents can replicate key findings on MW, we had them perform a task widely u

SUBMITTER: Shinagawa K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11907069 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature