It’s good to be a daydream believer

Zoning out can help fire up other parts of your brain, UBC researcher says

By David Karp, Vancouver Sun – May 12, 2009

The next time your boss catches you zoning out, tell him or her you’re just trying to work your brain harder.

Activity in numerous regions of the brain increases when our minds wander, a study published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has found.

“There’s a bad reputation that mind-wandering gets in society. People are made to believe it’s a wasteful mental activity to engage in,” said University of B.C. psychology professor Kalina Christoff, the study’s lead author.

Researchers at UBC gave 15 young adults a button-pushing task. During the task, an fMRI machine repeatedly scanned their brains to determine what parts were being used. At the same time, a researcher asked participants whether they were focused on the button-pushing task.

By examining brain scans taken when participants were not focused, researchers observed what parts of the brain are active during daydreaming.

Christoff’s team found that the parts of the brain associated with complex problem solving – called the executive network – were activated when subjects’ minds wandered.

The parts of the brain used in normal daily tasks—called the default network—turn off during complex problem solving. But when the mind wanders, both networks stay on.

“We’ve been trying to find if there are any other circumstances where they both become activated, and we’ve only found two other circumstances,” Christoff said. Those circumstances are just before someone arrives at an insight from creative thinking, and watching a film.

So what exactly do people think about when they daydream?

“The vast majority of mind- wandering is oriented toward what scientists call ‘current concerns’—things that are unresolved in your

life currently,” Christoff explained. “When your mind wanders, you might actually be thinking about topics that are of much greater personal importance than what you have to do right now.”

And while topics of personal importance might not be what the boss finds important, Christoff said there may be a benefit to daydreaming.

“Let’s say you’re hard at work at some problem. It might be useful to let your mind wander for a little bit, and then go back to that problem,” she said. “That way, you might be able to use additional resources for the problem.”

But before you make a conscious decision to stop focussing on the task at hand and let your mind wander, there’s a caveat.

“Those two networks become even more active when you don’t realize your mind is wandering. That’s an unexpected finding,” Christoff said. “Mind-wandering without awareness is the most potent kind of mind -wandering.”