We have two major research programs ongoing in the lab. I put boredom at the forefront because it is what drives me most. But our second stream is just as interesting and I see a link between them that is not trivial.
Understanding Boredom
For some reason when many people think of boredom they conjure up the image of the couch potato. But nothing could be further from the truth. Boredom is a state of wanting, not of apathy. When you’re bored you’re looking around for something to do that will satisfy your need to act and be an effective agent in the world. That’s why boredom has common bedfellows of agitation, restlessness and even hostility!
BIG QUESTIONS
Is boredom a low or high arousal feeling state?
There are two camps on this question — some say low, some say high. I used to say high (it’s a restless, agitated feeling state, right?). Now I say both. But to substantiate that claim we need to do the work to examine the dynamics of boredom.
Is boredom the egg to depression’s chicken (or vice versa)?
We’ve long known that boredom and depression are highly correlated. But as every first-year student learns, correlation does not imply causation. Is boredom dissatisfaction turned outward — the world is not enough, whereas depression is dissatisfaction turned inward — I am not enough?
What does your brain on boredom look like?
We have some hints and one particular region to target — the anterior insular cortex. It seems this brain region is upregulated when you’re engaged and downregulated when you’re bored. But there’s a lot more to learn. How do reward networks (i.e., basal ganglia, orbitofrontal cortex) modulate the experience of boredom? Does boredom save us from the dark room problem? If so, is it the ACC that supports the drive to explore/act?
Building Mental Models
This line of work is with my colleague Britt Anderson.
We can’t possibly represent or respond to everything that is out there in the world — it would be a little like trying to drink from a fire hose! To cope, we create models in our mind’s eye that capture the rules and regularities that govern the world — gravity keeps me grounded, rain is wet, and many more sophisticated things than those. But any mental model we create is only as good as its predictive success — how well does it represent the realities of the world? — and its capacity to be updated. Things change, if our models are inflexible we will struggle to cope with that change.
BIG QUESTIONS
What counts as surprising?
We need to differentiate things that are just noise (e.g., cat videos on Youtube) from things that actually matter (e.g., my bus schedule has changed). And to complicate it further, there are different kinds of surprise!
How does the brain update?
We used to think this was going to be a right hemisphere thing, but evidence shows otherwise. Damage to either hemisphere disrupts updating. Surely each half of the brain is not simply duplicating roles (like the sleep behavior of the Indus dolphin!). We think that similar behavioral deficits in left and right brain damage arise from distinct mechanisms.
The Link
What links boredom and mental models? Foraging and the insular cortex. What do you do when you forage for berries? OK, so you don’t ever really forage, but what did our ancestors do? They (and animals who still have to forage) did not stand in front of a blueberry bush and denude it before moving on. Instead, they picked berries at one location (exploiting resources) until the effort was no longer worth it and they began wondering whether a more plentiful bush of berries might be just around the corner (opportunity costs). So they went in search of better berries (exploration). These processes are important for building mental models. Without exploration we never learn the limits of our models. And it is boredom which signals the need to explore. Boredom tells us that what we’re doing now isn’t satisfying and we need to move on, explore for better opportunities. Or berries, or whatever.
Tools
We use everything we can get our hands on — survey data, behavioural experiments, neuroimaging (fMRI with Mac Shine in Australia, EEG), genetics (with Marla Sokolowski at UofT), and developmental data (with Teena Willoughby at Brock).
Converging methods are important to tackle what is a complex, multifaceted experience.