New study suggests we have 6,200 thoughts every day - Big Think

Anew study from psychologists at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario reports observations of the transition from one thought to another in fMRI brain scans. Though the researchers didn’t detect the content of our thoughts, their method allowed them to count each one. Referred to as “thought worms,” the team says that the average human has 6,200 thoughts per day. “What we call ‘thought worms’ are adjacent points in a simplified representation of activity patterns in the brain,” said senior study author Jordan Poppenk. “The brain occupies a different point in this ‘state space’ at every moment. When a person moves onto a new thought, they create a new thought worm that we can detect with our methods.” The study was recently published in the journal Nature Communications. Billion Photos / Shutterstock Spontaneous thought and attention regions distinguish transitions from meta-stability Image source: Poppenk, et al There’s been a fair amount of research devoted to understanding what a

Anew study from psychologists at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario reports observations of the transition from one thought to another in fMRI brain scans. Though the researchers didn’t detect the content of our thoughts, their method allowed them to count each one. Referred to as “thought worms,” the team says that the average human has 6,200 thoughts per day. “What we call ‘thought worms’ are adjacent points in a simplified representation of activity patterns in the brain,” said senior study author Jordan Poppenk. “The brain occupies a different point in this ‘state space’ at every mome