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On the origins of endogenous thoughts

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Abstract

Endogenous thoughts are thoughts that we activate in a top-down manner or in the absence of the appropriate stimuli. We use endogenous thoughts to plan or recall past events. In this sense, endogenous thinking is one of the hallmarks of our cognitive lives. In this paper, I investigate how it is that we come to possess endogenous control over our thoughts. Starting from the close relation between language and thinking, I look into speech production—a process motorically controlled by the inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Interestingly, IFG is also closely related to silent talking, as well as volition. The connection between IFG and volition is important given that endogenous thoughts are or at least greatly resemble voluntary actions. Against this background, I argue that IFG is key to understanding the origins of conscious endogenous thoughts. Furthermore, I look into goal-directed thinking and show that IFG plays a key role also in unconscious endogenous thinking.

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Notes

  1. See (Tillas 2011, 2016) for a discussion of how we form concepts that do not pick out any tangible entities like democracy and justice.

  2. The notion of sub-activation refers not to the equivalents of discrete values ‘0’–neuron not firing–and ‘1’–neuron firing – but to values within the range 0–1 (see also Trafford and Tillas 2015; for a detailed discussion of related issues).

  3. The present view also differs from semantic nets as it builds upon personal experience through which the subject acquires information about the world, while semantic memory nets do not focus on personal experience.

  4. These connections weightings have been later on used to account for typicality effects (Collins and Loftus 1975).

  5. Similar issues arise for homophones to the extent that they have to be disambiguated, pronouns whose referents have to be fixed, and so forth. The points made in the paper apply also to these cases.

  6. It is worth clarifying that speech production is also informed by parts of the auditory cortex. For instance, Behroozmand et al. (2015) show that speaking is underlain by activation of a complex network of brain regions including bilateral superior temporal gyrus (STG), Heschl's gyrus, precentral gyrus, supplementary motor area (SMA), Rolandic operculum, post-central gyrus and right IFG. Furthermore, Behroozmand et al. show that for vowel sound production, the areas of Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) activation increase during speech production also include bilateral precentral gyrus, SMA, IFG, post-central gyrus and insula.

  7. Intrusive thoughts are most often construed as repeatedly occurring thoughts that might be unwanted or negative. Specifically, subjects were asked to rate the extent to which statements such as ‘Today, I cannot get certain thoughts out of my mind’ and ‘Today, I keep thinking about something over and over again’, as well as a statement concerning self-related intrusive thoughts, ‘Today, I have difficulties suppressing thoughts about myself’, match their thoughts as well as their feeling during a given day, on a scale (0–does not apply at all to 7–does apply very well. The average score for all three items for the one hundred days of the study indicated the average amount and intensity of intrusive thoughts during the time of the study.

  8. Regional Homogeneity is a voxel-based measure of brain activity, which evaluates the similarity or synchronisation between the time series of a given voxel and its nearest neighbours (Zang et al. 2004).

  9. I use ‘computationally’ here in the broad sense of the term.

  10. The transition between different thoughts following ‘I want food’ such ‘Shall I go for x or y?’ are easily understood in terms of associations.

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  1. Institut für Philosophie, Heinrich-Heine-Universität, University of Dusseldorf, Universitätsstr. 1, 40225, Düsseldorf, Germany

    Alexandros Tillas

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Handling editor: Katsumi Watanabe (University of Tokyo).

Reviewers: Alain Morin (Mount Royal University), Zane Zheng (Lasell College), Lila Chrysikou (University of Kansas).

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Tillas, A. On the origins of endogenous thoughts. Cogn Process 18, 107–117 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10339-016-0786-1

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