Fig. 1: Experimental design and hypotheses.
From: Predicting lapses of attention with sleep-like slow waves
a Participants performed both a SART (Sustained Attention to Response Task) on faces stimuli (NoGo trials: smiling faces) and a SART on digits (NoGo trials: 3). Face/Digit presentation was continuous (new face/digit every 0.75–1.25 s). Images of faces were obtained from the Radboud Face Database (see “Methods”). b Every 30 to 70 s, participants were interrupted and instructed to report their mental state (see “Methods” and Supplementary Methods). Most importantly, they were asked to indicate whether they were focusing on the task (task-focused: ON), thinking about nothing (mind blanking: MB) or thinking about something other than the task (mind wandering: MW). High-density EEG and pupil size were continuously recorded throughout the task. c Proportion of mental states reported during probes categorized as task-focused (ON, green), mind wandering (MW, orange) and mind blanking (MB, blue) during the tasks with Digits (circles for each individual participant; filled surfaces for smoothed density plot) and Faces (diamonds and surfaces with horizontal stripes). Grey diamonds and circles show the average across participants.
