People who use MDMA (ecstasy) show impairments in specific cognitive processes—set shifting, memory updating, and social and emotional judgment—compared to polydrug users who do not take MDMA. These deficits remained significant even after accounting for use of other drugs. The findings suggest that recreational ecstasy use may harm prefrontal cortex functions.
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.