“Like a bird’s life, stream of thought seems to be made of an alternation of flights and perchings.” (James, 1890)
Human thought is spontaneous and often leaps to new topics, signaling context shifts. To investigate the neural dynamics associated with these thought transitions, we collect fMRI data while participants engage in a free-speaking task designed to elicit diverse, self-generated thoughts. We examine whether distinct neural activities are involved in different types of transitions, such as externally constrained shifts (e.g., topic-cued thinking), and spontaneous shifts (e.g., mind wandering).