The disentanglement of the neural and experiential complexity of self-generated thoughts: A users guide to combining experience sampling with neuroimaging data.
NeuroImage May 15, 2019 Léa M Martinon, Jonathan Smallwood, Deborah McGann et al.
People spend a lot of time engaged in internally generated thoughts like mind-wandering, but studying these private experiences is methodologically difficult because they are not directly observable. This review argues that combining self-reports with neuroimaging techniques—such as EEG, ERP, and MRI—provides a more rigorous way to investigate patterns of ongoing thought. Imaging methods reveal the presence of covert mental states and help distinguish different aspects of experience, offering critical information that purely psychological approaches cannot. Triangulating brain data with subjective reports is essential for building an empirically grounded account of the stream of consciousness.