Unravelling inner experiences during resting state

Abstract

The investigation of resting state activity has become an extremely busy topic in neurocognitive research. A recent pubmed search revealed more than 2000 entries for the terms "resting state" AND "fMRI". Several putative clinical applications have been suggested, such as the detection of early signs of Alzheimer's disease (e.g. Lustig et al., 2003) or risk of developing psychosis (e.g. Jukuri et al., 2013). However, the usefulness of resting state data is hampered by the fact, that up to now only very few investigations have tried to elucidate the mental processes occurring during these experiments. Without knowledge of these processes the purely physiologically based findings of altered activations and functional connectivities during resting state lack a meaningful neurocognitive interpretation. © 2013 Fell.