Published in ScienceDirect, “The wandering brain: Meta-analysis of functional neuroimaging studies of mind-wandering and related spontaneous thought processes” researchers use neuroimaging analysis on spontaneous thoughts.
Cognitive functions in mind-wandering states links to brain activity in both default mode network and not directly related regions with comparable consistency.
Quantitative meta-analysis of neuroimaging studies bring light to neural correlates.
“These meta-analytic results indicate that DMN activation alone is insufficient to adequately capture the neural basis of spontaneous thought; frontoparietal control network areas, and other non-DMN regions, appear to be equally central. We conclude that further progress in the cognitive and clinical neuroscience of spontaneous thought will therefore require a re-balancing of our view of the contributions of various regions and networks throughout the brain, and beyond the DMN.” check the full paper