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Previous research shows that individuals who tend to get bored frequently and intensely—the highly boredom prone—are more likely to engage in risky behaviors. However, these studies are based largely on self-reports. Here we address this gap and suggest that noisy decision-making (DM) is a potential driver for this relationship between boredom proneness and risk-taking. In Study 1, eighty-six participants completed the Balloon Analogue Risk Task (BART) while EEG was recorded. We found blunted feedback processing with higher boredom proneness, as indexed by reduced feedback-P3 amplitudes. Risk taking, as indexed by the BART, was not higher in the highly boredom prone. In Study 2a (N = 404) we directly tested the noisy DM hypothesis in an online sample using a binary choice task, and found that with higher boredom proneness, participants were more likely to alternate between choices on a trial-to-trial basis, but were not more likely to choose the risky alternative. These findings were replicated in a new sample (Study 2b), and extended to the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; Study 3). In the IGT we found increased choice switching and reduced feedback sensitivity with higher boredom proneness. Once again, higher risk taking as indexed by the IGT was not evident in the highly boredom prone. Overall, our findings suggest that boredom proneness is associated with noisy decision-making (i.e., a tendency to alternate more between choice options regardless of risk level), and not risk-seeking per se. That is, the highly boredom prone are not necessarily attracted to risks, but rather, may be insensitive to risks due to reduced feedback sensitivity.

We have shown recently that damage to the right hemisphere impairs the ability to update mental models when evidence suggests an old model is no longer appropriate. We argue that this deficit is generic in the sense that it crosses multiple cognitive and perceptual domains. Here, we examined the nature of this updating impairment to determine more precisely the underlying mechanisms. We had right (RBD, N = 12) and left brain damaged (LBD, N = 10) patients perform versions of our picture-morphing task in which pictures gradually morph from one object (e.g., shark) to another (e.g., plane). Performance was contrasted against two groups of healthy older controls, one matched on age (HCO-age-matched, N = 9) and another matched on general level of cognitive ability (HCO-cognitively-matched, N = 9). We replicated our earlier findings showing that RBD patients took longer than LBD patients and HCOs to report seeing the second object in a sequence of morphing images. The groups did not differ when exposed to a morphing sequence a second time, or when responding to ambiguous images outside the morphing context. This indicates that RBD patients have little difficulty alternating between known representations or labeling ambiguous images. Instead, the difficulty lies in generating alternate hypotheses for ambiguous information. Lesion overlay analyses, although speculative given the sample size, are consistent with our fMRI work in healthy individuals in implicating the anterior insular cortex as critical for updating mental models.

Characterized as an agitated state in which the individual is motivated to engage in their environment but all attempts to do so fail to satisfy, boredom represents a disengaged attentional state that is associated with negative affect and poor self-control. There have been anecdotal reports of increased levels of boredom post-traumatic brain injury (TBI). For the first time, we provide objective evidence that TBI patients do indeed experience higher levels of boredom proneness. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that the presence and severity of head injury were a significant positive predictor of levels of boredom proneness and a negative predictor of self-control. As with healthy controls, TBI patients showed a strong negative correlation between boredom proneness and self-control-those with lower levels of self-control exhibited higher levels of boredom proneness. This was despite the fact that our TBI patients reported higher overall levels of self-control (probably concomitant with their older mean age). The TBI patients also showed strong positive correlations between boredom proneness and measures of physical aggression and anger. Together, this suggests that patients with TBI may be more susceptible to increased levels of boredom proneness and other negative affective states that arise as a consequence of failures of self-control.

Effectively engaging with the world depends on accurate representations of the regularities that make up that world-what we call mental models. The success of any mental model depends on the ability to adapt to changes-to 'update' the model. In prior work, we have shown that damage to the right hemisphere of the brain impairs the ability to update mental models across a range of tasks. Given the disparate nature of the tasks we have employed in this prior work (i.e. statistical learning, language acquisition, position priming, perceptual ambiguity, strategic game play), we propose that a cognitive module important for updating mental representations should be generic, in the sense that it is invoked across multiple cognitive and perceptual domains. To date, the majority of our tasks have been visual in nature. Given the ubiquity and import of temporal information in sensory experience, we examined the ability to build and update mental models of time. We had healthy individuals complete a temporal prediction task in which intervals were initially drawn from one temporal range before an unannounced switch to a different range of intervals. Separate groups had the second range of intervals switch to one that contained either longer or shorter intervals than the first range. Both groups showed significant positive correlations between perceptual and prediction accuracy. While each group updated mental models of temporal intervals, those exposed to shorter intervals did so more efficiently. Our results support the notion of generic capacity to update regularities in the environment-in this instance based on temporal information. The task developed here is well suited to investigations in neurological patients and in neuroimaging settings.

It has been hypothesized that many of the cognitive impairments commonly seen after right brain damage (RBD) can be characterized as a failure to build or update mental models. We (Danckert et al. in Neglect as a disorder of representational updating. NOVA Open Access, New York, 2012a; Cereb Cortex 22:2745–2760, 2012b) were the first to directly assess the association between RBD and updating and found that RBD patients were unable to exploit a strongly biased play strategy in their opponent in the children’s game rock, paper, scissors. Given that this game required many other cognitive capacities (i.e., working memory, sustained attention, reward processing), RBD patients could have failed this task for various reasons other than a failure to update. To assess the generality of updating deficits after RBD, we had RBD, left brain-damaged (LBD) patients and healthy controls (HCs) describe line drawings that evolved gradually from one figure (e.g., rabbit) to another (e.g., duck) in addition to the RPS updating task. RBD patients took significantly longer to alter their perceptual report from the initial object to the final object than did LBD patients and HCs. Although both patient groups performed poorly on the RPS task, only the RBD patients showed a significant correlation between the two, very different, updating tasks. We suggest these data indicate a general deficiency in the ability to update mental representations following RBD.

Boredom is a common experience, prevalent in neurological and psychiatric populations, yet its cognitive characteristics remain poorly understood. We explored the relationship between boredom proneness, sustained attention and adult symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The results showed that high boredom-prone individuals (HBP) performed poorly on measures of sustained attention and showed increased symptoms of ADHD and depression. The results also showed that HBP individuals can be characterised as either apathetic-in which the individual is unconcerned with his/her environment, or as agitated-in which the individual is motivated to engage in meaningful activities, although attempts to do so fail to satisfy. Apathetic boredom proneness was associated with attention lapses, whereas agitated boredom proneness was associated with decreased sensitivity to errors of sustained attention, and increased symptoms of adult ADHD. Our results suggest there is a complex relationship between attention and boredom proneness.

Boredom is a ubiquitous human experience that can best be described as an inability to engage with one's environment despite the motivation to do so. Boredom is perceived as a negative experience and demonstrates strong associations with other negatively valenced states including depression and aggression. Although boredom has been shown to be elevated in neurological and psychiatric illnesses, little is known about the neural underpinnings of the state. We scanned the brains of healthy participants under four separate conditions: a resting state scan, a sustained attention task and two video-based mood inductions, one known to produce boredom and another we validated to produce a state of interest or engagement. Using independent components analyses, results showed common regions of correlated activation in posterior regions of the so-called default mode network (DMN) of the brain across all four conditions. The sustained attention and boredom induction scans were differentiated from the resting state scan by the presence of anticorrelated activity-i.e. when DMN regions were active, this region was deactivated-in the anterior insula cortex. This same region demonstrated correlated activity with both the DMN and the regions associated with attentional control during the interest mood induction. We interpret these findings to suggest that boredom represents a failure to engage executive control networks when faced with a monotonous task-in other words, when the task demands some level of engagement (watch the movie, search for infrequent targets), but is so mundane that attempts to do so fail.

Judgments of spatial relationships are often made when the object or observer is moving. Behaviourally, there is evidence that these 'dynamic' judgments of spatial extent differ from static judgments. For example, in one of the simplest probes of spatial extent--the line bisection task--the typically observed leftward bisection bias of about 1% of line length is increased considerably after left-to-right scanning. Here we used fMRI to examine whether or not different brain regions would be involved in static and dynamic judgments of spatial extent. Dynamic (i.e., scan the line prior to bisecting) relative to static ocular bisections (i.e., line bisection by fixation) produced activations in the cuneus and precuneus bilaterally, with reduced activation relative to static judgments observed in the supramarginal gyrus bilaterally. Dynamic bisections relative to a control condition (i.e., scan a line and then saccade to a transection mark) produced activations in the precuneus/superior parietal lobe bilaterally and left cerebellum. Only marginal evidence was found for different activations due to the initial scan direction of the line. These results highlight the fact that dynamic judgments of spatial extent use distinct brain regions from those employed to make static judgments, and the same mechanism is employed independent of scan direction. It may be the case that velocity processing and time estimates are integrated primarily in the cuneus and precuneus to produce estimates of spatial extent under dynamic scanning conditions.

Recent work has shown that pictorial illusions have a greater effect on perceptual judgements than they do on the visual control of actions, such as object-directed grasping. This dissociation between vision for perception and vision for action is thought to reflect the operation of two separate streams of visual processing in the brain. Glover and Dixon claim, however, that perceptual illusions can influence the control of grasping but that these effects are evident only at early stages of the movement. By the time the action nears its completion any effect of illusions disappears. Glover and Dixon suggest that these results are consistent with what they call a 'planning and control' model of action, in which actions are planned using a context-dependent visual representation but are monitored and corrected online using a context-independent representation. We reanalysed data from an earlier experiment on grasping in the Ebbinghaus illusion in which we showed that maximum grip aperture was unaffected by this size-contrast illusion. When we looked at these data more closely, we found no evidence for an effect of the illusion even at the earliest stages of the movement. These findings support the suggestion that the initial planning of a simple object-directed grasping movement in this illusory context is indeed refractory to the effects of the illusion. This is not to suggest that more deliberate and/or complex movements could not be influenced by contextual information.

Studies using visual illusions to demonstrate a dissociation within the visual system can provide relevant and decisive data only if certain methodological points are taken into account. Although, our previous work (Stottinger et al. in Exp Brain Res 202:88–97, 2010) followed these points, the task made use of only 2-D stimuli which may raise doubts concerning the nature of grasping in that experiment. We therefore replicated the study using a 3-D version of the empty space illusion. Consistent with the earlier study, that used 2-D stimuli, we found that grip aperture followed actual target size independent of illusory effects, while perceived length, as indicated by finger-thumb span, clearly was subject to the illusion. Therefore, the prior results cannot be due to the use of 2-D stimuli. Together, these two studies provide clear evidence for the perception versus action hypothesis.

The line bisection task--commonly used as a clinical measure of unilateral neglect--requires participants to place a mark on a horizontal line to indicate where they think centre is. In general, results suggest that the allocation of attention mediates bisection. In addition, previous research shows that participants rarely explore the endpoints of lines, suggesting that peripheral visual information informs bisection. Here, we examined bisection performance under conditions in which differing levels of 'noise' were introduced to the line to examine the hypothesis that the fidelity and symmetry of peripheral information would inform performance. Contrary to our expectations, results showed that symmetrically introducing noise to the line biased bisection further leftward compared to a 'no-noise' condition. Furthermore, asymmetrical noise increased leftward bisection errors primarily when lines were presented in left space or when the greater amount of noise was on the left half of the line. These results indicate that the fidelity of peripheral visual information mediates bisection behaviour that is already biased leftwards probably due to right hemisphere attentional mechanisms.

Research exploring how scanning affects judgments of spatial extent has produced conflicting results. We conducted four experiments on line bisection judgments measuring ocular and pointing behavior, with line length, position, speed, acceleration, and direction of scanning manipulated. Ocular and pointing judgments produced distinct patterns. For static judgments (i.e., no scanning), the eyes were sensitive to position and line length with pointing much less sensitive to these factors. For dynamic judgments (i.e., scanning the line), bisection biases were influenced by the speed of scanning but not acceleration, while both ocular and pointing results varied with scan direction. We suggest that static and dynamic probes of spatial judgments are different. Furthermore, the substantial differences seen between static and dynamic bisection suggest the two invoke different neural processes for computing spatial extent for ocular and pointing judgments.

Prism adaptation (PA) alleviates some neglect symptoms, however, the mechanisms underlying these effects are unclear. One brain area that may be important in generating these beneficial effects is the superior parietal lobe (SPL), a region not typically damaged in neglect, and known to be important for attention, visuomotor control, and eye movements. We examined the effects of rightward PA on covert attention in CF, a patient with bilateral SPL lesions, compared to a group of controls (N = 26) who underwent sham adaptation. In contrast to previous work in neglect, there was no reduction in CF’s leftward disengage deficit, or rightward attentional bias following PA. These results suggest that the SPL plays an important role in generating the beneficial after-effects of prisms on attention.

Visually guided prehension is controlled by a specialized visuomotor system in the posterior parietal cortex. It is not clear how this system responds to visual stimuli that lack three-dimensional (3D) structure, such as two-dimensional (2D) images of objects. We asked a neurological patient with visual-form agnosia (patient D.F.) to grasp 3D objects and 2D images of the same objects and to estimate their sizes manually. D.F.’s grip aperture was scaled to the sizes of the 2D and 3D target stimuli, but her manual estimates were poorly correlated with object size. Control participants demonstrated appropriate size-scaling in both the grasping and manual size-estimation tasks, but tended to use a smaller peak aperture when reaching to grasp 2D images. We conclude that: (1) the dorsal stream grasping system does not discriminate in a fundamental way between 2D and 3D objects, and (2) neurologically normal participants might adopt a different visuomotor strategy for target objects that are recognized to be ungraspable. These findings are consistent with the view that the dorsal grasping system accesses a pragmatic, spatial representation of the target object, whereas the ventral system accesses a more comprehensive, volumetric description of the object.

The superior hemiretina in primates and humans has a greater density of ganglion cells than the inferior hemiretina, suggesting a bias towards processing information in the lower visual field (loVF). In primates, this over-representation of the loVF is also evident at the level of striate and extrastriate cortex. This is particularly true in some of the visual areas constituting the dorsal "action" pathway, such as area V6A. Here we show that visually guided pointing movements with the hand are both faster and more accurate when performed in the loVF when compared to the same movements made in the upper visual field (upVF). This was true despite the fact that the biomechanics of the movements made did not differ across conditions. The loVF advantage for the control of visually guided pointing movements is unlikely to be due to retinal factors and may instead reflect a functional bias for controlling skilled movements in this region of space. Possible neural correlates for this loVF advantage for visually guided pointing are discussed.

Neurophysiology and neuroimaging research implicates distinct regions of posterior parietal cortex for reaching versus grasping and for completing these movements in central versus peripheral space. Typically, visuomotor tasks only examine movements made in the frontoparallel plane. We examined a patient with a right superior parietal lesion encompassing the parietal-occipital junction, the intraparietal sulcus and the putative human homologue of V6A on pointing tasks in the sagittal or frontoparallel planes. The patient did not demonstrate a speed-accuracy trade-off, but did show larger times post-peak velocity for all movement directions. Her movements in the sagittal axis were more disordered than movements in the frontoparallel plane. These data indicate a role for superior parietal cortex in fine tuning of visually guided movements and more particularly for movements made back towards the body.