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Daydreaming – A Natural Process

A recent study, published in the journal of Science, has found new insights into the process of daydreaming. Researchers at Harvard Medical School devised an experiment using the technology of functional magnetic resonance imaging or fMRI to see what is going on when the brain has down time. By using fMRI, scientists are able to take real-time images of the brain, identifying which areas are active and when.

The research team had 19 volunteers perform a variety of mental tasks and in between exercises; the scientists also imaged their brains while they were just sitting and waiting. While we’ve all had the experience that in the absence of focusing on something specific, the mind wanders, the scientists discovered that specific brain regions become active during down time.

They found that during routine tasks, the participants showed increased activity in certain regions of the brain's cortex (the outer layer of gray matter that covers the surface of the brain). When these "daydream" brain regions lit up, the participants also reported the highest levels of irrelevant thoughts.

The active regions were the superior frontal gyrus (one of the main bumps on the front part of the human brain), the insula, (on the side of the brain) and parts of the temporal lobe (at the back of the brain). And not all minds wander to the same extent. Subjects who showed increased blood flow in the default brain regions also reported more stray thoughts.

Why does the mind wander into the dreamy state where the brain spontaneously generates a stream of voices, images, thoughts and feelings? While the researchers at Harvard aren’t sure why it occurs, they speculate that perhaps daydreaming is a survival mechanism that keeps the brain functioning in an active state, so when sudden occurrences in the environment require quick reactions and responsive thoughts, the brain is ready.

New Research on Daydreaming

Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), medical researchers have found that when we perform mental tasks (adding numbers, distinguishing between different shapes or different faces, etc.) certain areas of the brain light up indicating activity. On the other hand, when we stop performing tasks and our minds are free to daydream, other areas (frontal, parietal and medial temporal lobes) of the brain light up. For lack of better term, the research scientists call this daydreaming area the dark network.

In a search to find meaning for this capacity of the brain, psychologists at Harvard Medical School have come up with a very important point. Task-orientated functioning operates in the objective world, the here and now. (Even if we’re gauging something for the future, we calculate or estimate through objective reasoning.)

However daydreaming has the ability to travel in time – to revisit and re-evaluate past experiences and learn lessons from them, or to project into the future and explore new possibilities. While animals learn from trial and error, revisiting the past affords us multiple chances to learn from a single experience.

And traveling into the future allows us to preview our actions and their consequences, to mentally try out possibilities. Think how invaluable this is for us, not only saving time but also preventing possible disasters. And consider how much time we spend in this zone, perhaps more time than the mundane present requires of our attention. So daydreaming is actually a dynamic other gear our brain operates in, opening the possibilities for expansion, growth and greatness.

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Sources: Daydream Believer Science 19 January 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5810, p. 297 Escape from the Insipid: Our Brains May Be Wired for Daydreaming Scientific American January 18, 2007 Wandering Minds: The Default Network and Stimulus-Independent Thought Science 19 January 2007: Vol. 315. no. 5810, pp. 393 - 395

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