An important discovery

Did you know that we humans think more than 6,000 thoughts in a day?

By looking at patterns in brain measurements that have been nicknamed thought worms, researchers in Canada have found that the average person has over 6,000 thoughts every single day. 

Thoughtworms – an important discovery about how we think

Thought worms may sound like something out of a science fiction movie, but they are a new discovery in cognitive neuroscience about how we humans think. Thought worms are a form of visualization of thoughts and train of thought in humans, and are a concept introduced by Dr. Jordan Poppenk at Queen's University in Canada. ¹

A revolutionary visualization technique

In an article published in the renowned journal Nature Communications ¹ , the researchers show how thoughts and transitions from one thought to the next can be visualized as small worms in brain measurements. In the experiments, healthy volunteers were connected to advanced devices that measured differences in brain activity at rest and when they watched a film.

When the researchers analyzed the results, they could see how the pattern of worms in brain images marked the start and end of thought trains in the subjects. It is these patterns that, in a simplified representation, can be shown graphically as small worms – hence the name thought worms.

According to Dr. Poppenk, the big breakthrough came when they stopped trying to understand the content of their thoughts and instead focused on figuring out when one thought transitioned into another. ² He describes how they gave up trying to understand the vocabulary of their brains in favor of figuring out where commas and full stops were placed.

A breakthrough in neuroscience

Dr. Poppenk's research shows that the brain "shifts gears" more than 6,000 times each day, and marks a breakthrough in neuroscience, as it gives us a tool to measure thoughts and thought patterns. The mindworms have given us the ability to see how many thoughts we have in a day or see how the frequency of thought transitions changes during different activities.

This type of research has previously been done using more primitive methods, such as having the subject say when they think a new thought. However, this is a poor technique for studying mental activity during rest.

The researchers' plan is to use this new and revolutionary method to map and identify different states of mind that make a difference in thought patterns.

The brain – a hardworking thinking machine

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Sources:
1) Tseng, J. & Poppenk, J. (2020). Brain meta-state transitions demarcate thoughts across task contexts exposing the mental noise of trait neuroticism. Nat. Commun. , 11 , 3480.

2) https://www.queensu.ca/gazette/stories/discovery-thought-worms-opens-window-mind , published July 13, 2020, retrieved September 8, 2020.