Remember when your teachers used to yell at you for staring out the window during class and said, “Stop daydreaming”? For a long time idle thought was believed to be a waste of time, but in the span of a few short years researchers have come to view mental leisure as important, purposeful work; work that relies on a powerful and wide-spread network of brain cells firing in unison.
The individual brain regions that make up that network are activated when people think about their past or future or project motives on other people. However, when these regions work together, as they do when we daydream, they function as our brain’s “neutral” setting. Neuroscientists call it the “default mode network.”
Understanding the way our default mode network operates may do more than legitimize the universal practice of zoning out. It could help diagnose and treat psychiatric conditions as diverse as Alzheimer’s disease, autism, depression and schizophrenia; all of which disrupt operations in the default mode network.
Even more promising is the possibility that a tool now exists that could help identify the way we conceive of our “self.” Research on the default mode network and mind-wandering has helped focus neuroscientists’ attention to our rich inner world and raises the prospect that our sense of self can be observed, measured and discussed.
