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This I could Have Told You
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Saturday, January 20, 2007
5:43:00 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment
Daydreaming is brain's default setting, study finds
Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind and certain brain regions are devoted to it, U.S. researchers reported Friday.
When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task but then other brain regions get busy during down time, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"There is this network of regions that always seems to be active when you don't give people something to do," psychologist Malia Mason of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital said in a telephone interview. When Mason asked people what was happening during this down time, the answer was clear."It's daydreaming," she said. "But I find that the vast majority of time, people aren't having fanciful thoughts. People are thinking about what they have to do later today."
Incidentally, this is the sort of time in which I do the vast majority of my thinking about my next book (or current book, when I'm working on one). Not so much directed thinking as simply vaguely wondering what would happen if I did this or this. In other words, daydreaming has been very very good to me.
What do you daydream about?
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5:43:00 PM EST
Hearing Nothing at the moment
This I could Have Told You
Daydreaming is brain's default setting, study finds
Daydreaming seems to be the default setting of the human mind and certain brain regions are devoted to it, U.S. researchers reported Friday.
When people are given a specific task to do, they focus on that task but then other brain regions get busy during down time, the researchers report in Friday's issue of the journal Science.
"There is this network of regions that always seems to be active when you don't give people something to do," psychologist Malia Mason of Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital said in a telephone interview. When Mason asked people what was happening during this down time, the answer was clear."It's daydreaming," she said. "But I find that the vast majority of time, people aren't having fanciful thoughts. People are thinking about what they have to do later today."
Incidentally, this is the sort of time in which I do the vast majority of my thinking about my next book (or current book, when I'm working on one). Not so much directed thinking as simply vaguely wondering what would happen if I did this or this. In other words, daydreaming has been very very good to me.
What do you daydream about?
Written by johnmscalzi Blog about this entry |
Add to del.icio.us | digg this
This entry has 2 comments: (Add your own)
-
I usually daydream about Swedish things like Ikea and porn.
-Dan
http://journals.aol.com/dpoem/TheWisdomofaDistractedMind/
1/20/07 11:38 PM
I used to go to high school with a girl who'd regularly say to people "Umm... my daydream is better than any conversation I could have with you so LEAVE."