Dear all,
We would like to investigate mind-wandering in relationship with resting state fMRI. Should we ask participants to keep eyes open or eyes closed ? I could not find a consensus in the litterature.
Any feedback is helpful.
Thanks !
This paper might help you in this regard
https://www.nature.com/articles/srep40722
There is no consensus, and both are probably fine. I tend to prefer eyes-open as it makes it somewhat less likely that people will fall asleep during the scan!
M.
Thank you Matthew B Wall for your feedback, this is also my feeling as we will have 10 min of resting state, lon enough to fell asleep...
Agreed with eyes open. Not only does this help prevent sleeping, but it is also a more natural state for mind wandering (which, by definition, means that you have some sort of other task that your mind is 'supposed' to be focused on). Usually, presenting a fixation cross during the resting state is adequate.
Many thanks, Eric Andrews , this is exactly the information I was missing to truly take my decision, thanks all for your feedbacks.
Mind wandering is associated to the DMN and inward focused thought. DMN activation is anti correlated to networks involved in visual search. You want the DMN active. Therefore closed eyes is best. Also, do your best to attenuate scanner noise.
The DMN is active during a variety of conditions but, agreed, the literature indicates that it is less active when there is a visual 'task'. For that reason, a fixation cross serves as an adequate visual stimuli that doesn't demand/elicit much effort from the participant (I suppose this is akin to meditation practices that use 'candle-gazing').
As far as I understand the question, the question is about a resting state condition so we shouldn't really be trying to encourage any type of specific mental behavior for the participant.
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