$350K NSF Grant Examining Role of Mind Wandering on Inflammation During Chronic Stress

Jonathan Banks, Ph.D. is an Associate Professor in NSU’s College of Psychology. Dr. Banks and collaborator Jaime Tartar, Ph.D. (College of Psychology) were recently funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) with a $350,000 grant for their project titled “Identifying the Role of Mind Wandering in Stress Related Changes in Executive Attention and Inflammation.”

 

Tell me about your recent grant-funded project.

This project is funded by the NSF and is a culmination of 10 years of work with Dr. Tartar examining the impact of stress on cognitive function and inflammation. Prior research in this area has looked at these two areas separately and what we’re doing with this research is tying these two areas of study—cognitive aspects and inflammation responses—together in order to look at the role of mind wandering on both aspects. Our lab has shown that mind wandering is both a cause and a consequence of stress.

We are exploring the role of mind wandering, especially negatively-valenced thoughts on inflammation during chronic periods of stress. Results from this work can lead to targeted behavioral interventions to reduce stress and associated inflammation.

 

Who is working with you on this project and what are each of your roles?

My lab will oversee and run the cognitive portion of the project. We will assess measures of attention control, working memory, and mind wandering. Co-PI Tartar’s lab will quantify a range of biomarkers of stress and inflammation.

Additionally, with this funding we will be working with several graduate students throughout the project. We also have a large team of undergraduate students who will assist with data collection.

 

What stage are you at with the current project?

We began data collection during the Fall of 2022 and are actively recruiting participants. We are specifically recruiting medical and law students as they experience a great deal of stress due to challenging curriculums and exams. We collected baseline data early in the fall semester since this is a time when there is less stress for these students. We will compare these data to data we will collect a week before their exams—at a high stress time.

 

What is your hope for the outcomes in this project?

I hope to build a better model of what is happening in terms of the chronic stress system. This model would connect what’s going on in neuroscience with effects of stress observed in cognition. We have a model of what happens to the human system in terms of inflammation and cognition in the face of stress. If we find that mind wandering plays a role in this system, we will be able to introduce a targeted behavioral intervention through, for example, mindfulness training or exercise to help reduce stress or the effect of stress on attention and inflammation.

One unique aspect of the collaboration between Dr. Tartar and myself is that it is rare to find a single individual researcher who is trained to look across all these domains, so the collaborative research approach bridges these two areas of research in a way that could be transformative for intervention development.

 

What advice do you have for other grant seekers at NSU?

In grant seeking you have to keep trying. I suggest working with NSU’s Grant Writing Lab to get help with editing and enhancing your grant. Also, don’t be afraid to talk to agency program officers and colleagues that have been funded by them in the past. This was my first federal external grant, but it was not Dr. Tartar’s, so working with her helped me a great deal in the grant application process.

 

What is the next grant proposal or project on your agenda?

We would like to see if implementing mindfulness training could alter the susceptibility to stress for both the cognitive and inflammation aspects of this study. Specifically, we would like to explore if we can prevent mind wandering from becoming problematic. I would like to explore mindfulness training for police officers and other high stress groups to see if we can alter sustained attention and mind wandering to help these individuals make more accurate decisions in their respective fields.