Mind-wandering, a common daily mental activity, varies uniquely from person to person. In three individuals who each reported hundreds of mind-wandering episodes during multiple fMRI sessions, reliable links between mind-wandering and default mode network (DMN) activation emerged when brain networks were analyzed within each person. However, the timing of spontaneous DMN activity relative to subjective reports, and the broader networks activated or deactivated during mind-wandering, differed across individuals. Whole-brain connectivity patterns that predicted mind-wandering within an individual did not fully generalize to others, and predictive models from larger datasets largely failed when applied to these densely-sampled individuals. This work demonstrates both conserved and variable neural representations of mind-wandering, highlighting the value of personalized approaches.
Working memory may operate on unconscious perceptual contents, though it remains linked to conscious perception. A large, multisite replication (19 labs, 531 participants, 720 trials) of Soto et al. (2011) found above-chance accuracy (.55) on a visual discrimination task when participants reported not seeing the subliminal Gabor grating. Performance correlated positively with cue detection sensitivity (r = .228), and the regression intercept was significantly above chance (β₀ = .521). The study provides an open-access dataset and confirms that measures were reliable and valid, supporting the existence of unconscious working memory.