Few of his contemporaries believed it was a good idea for psychologist Jonathan Smallwood to examine mind-wandering about 25 years ago. How could one ever hope to explore these impulsive and unpredictable thoughts that appear while people are not focused on their immediate environment or the work at hand? Imaginations that couldn't be correlated with any quantifiable external behavior?
Yet Smallwood, who is currently attending Queen's University in Ontario, Canada, persisted. He employed a tiresome computer activity that was designed to mimic the kinds of distractions that lead us to add milk to someone else's coffee when they specifically requested black. And to have a better understanding of when and why minds stray, as well as what things they tend to wander toward, he began by asking research participants a few simple questions. After some time, he started to scan the participants' brains as well, to get a better idea of what was happening when their minds were roaming.
Smallwood discovered that whereas happy minds frequently consider the future, unhappy minds frequently ruminate on the past. He also grew to believe that exploring our memories is essential to getting us ready for the future. Smallwood currently thinks mind-wandering is rarely a waste of time, despite the fact that some forms of it, like lingering on issues that can't be fixed, may be linked to depression. When our brain believes there isn't much else happening, it just tries to accomplish a little job.
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Do you think daydreaming and mind-wandering are distinct from one another?
I believe it is the same procedure applied in a different setting. You can claim you're daydreaming when you're on vacation and have a lot of free time about what you want to do next. But you would have the same thoughts as mind-wandering when you were under pressure to perform.
I believe it is more beneficial to discuss the underlying mechanisms, such as spontaneous thought or the decoupling of attention from perception, which occurs when our ideas diverge from how we perceive the outside world. These two processes happen when we daydream or let our minds roam.
We frequently need some time to recognize when our minds are straying. How can you acquire it in order to observe it in others?
We initially gave participants extremely dull experimental tasks, which caused a lot of mind-wandering. We would simply periodically check to see if the subject was daydreaming while monitoring brain activity in an fMRI machine.
But after conducting those kinds of studies for a while, I've come to the conclusion that much of the data we have will never teach us very much about how thinking functions in the real world, when individuals engage in activities like watching TV or going for a run.
So, we are currently attempting to analyze these circumstances. And rather than doing tests in which we merely inquire, "Are you daydreaming?" Many various questions are now being posed to people, such as "Are your thoughts detailed? Are they favorable? Are they making you drowsy?
Why did you choose to research mind-wandering, and how?
At the beginning of my profession, when I was young and naive, I began studying mind-wandering.
At the time, I wasn't really sure why it wasn't being studied. The focus of psychology at the time was on observable, external behavior. That's not what I want to know about my thoughts, I thought to myself. What I'm curious to know is: Why do they arrive, where do they originate from, and why do they continue even when they distract us from the present moment?
Brain imaging tools were emerging at the same time, and they were revealing to neuroscientists that the brain is active even when doing behavioral tasks. The reverse occurred in significant brain areas, today known as the default mode network: People's activity in these areas decreased when given a task.
This association between brain activity and mind-wandering was made by scientists, and it quickly gained popularity. I consider myself really fortunate since, when I began my PhD at Glasgow's University of Strathclyde, I had no idea any of that would happen. But I've seen how everything turns out.
So, would you argue that our brains operate in the default mode of mind-wandering?
The truth is that it is more intricate than that. The default mode network's activity during activities was first thought to hardly ever increase, according to researchers. However, each of these jobs required doing something in the outside world and were all externally centered. The default mode network was also active when participants were later asked to perform a task that doesn't require them to interact with their environment, such as ponder about the future.
The default mode network is activated by considerably easier actions that we have just discovered. Regions in the default mode network become more active when people are making that decision if you let them watch a sequence of shapes like triangles or squares on a screen while sporadically surprising them and asking something, like, "In the last trial, whose side was the triangle on?" If you believe the default mode network to be nothing more than a mind-wandering mechanism, that is a problematic observation.
However, the fact that the person is employing knowledge from memory in both instances is what unites them. I now believe that any thinking based on information from memory, including mind-wandering, requires the default mode network.
Is it feasible to provide evidence that this is the case?
In a recent study, we went beyond simply asking participants if they were paying attention. In the scanner, people were viewing brief factual sentences on a screen. Sometimes we would show them a prompt that said, "Remember," then something from a list of things from their past that they had earlier submitted. They would then remember what we showed them rather than reading. They could remember if we make them.
We discover that the brain scans used in this investigation strikingly resemble mind-wandering. This is significant because it provides us greater control over our thought patterns than when they arise naturally, like when our minds wander. Of course, the fact that it is not spontaneous is a drawback as well. But we've already conducted a great deal of unplanned investigations.
Much of what we observed in spontaneous mind-wandering is recapitulated when we ask people to recall items from the list. This implies that some of the activity we observe when our minds wander is in fact related to the recall of memories. We now believe that people's memories cause the decoupling between attention and perception to occur.
Have you asked individuals where their thoughts are going?
People's thoughts appear to be heavily influenced by the past and the future. I believe behaviors like mind-wandering are attempts by the brain to make sense of the events that have occurred so that we can act more appropriately in the future. This way of thinking, in my opinion, has played a significant role in the global conquest of our species. Almost nothing we accomplish can be described as merely being important at that specific time.
That distinct contrast stands out. That is not to say that other creatures are unable to envision the future; rather, it is to say that our ability to do so and our capacity to draw lessons from the past in order to create a better present is the foundation of our world. For millions of years, I believe animals that simply paid attention to the present were outcompeted by those that could recall the past and concentrate on future objectives. That is, until you had humans, a species that is fixated on exploiting the past to improve present behavior.
Additionally, people frequently find their thoughts wandering in social settings. This makes sense because practically all of our goals must be accomplished in collaboration with others, and interpersonal interactions are much more unpredictable than the Sun rising in the morning.
Although it is undoubtedly helpful, revisiting old problems can be extremely distressing.
Certainly, it is possible. According to our research, daydreaming about the past is frequently accompanied by a bad mood.
Let me give you an illustration of what I believe might be taking place. For a scientist like me, mind-wandering is immensely fulfilling when it leads to original solutions to scientific issues. But as you can see, it might be challenging to break the habit of dwelling on the past if my circumstances change and I find myself with a set of issues I can't resolve. Even if I am unable to solve the issue, my brain will continue to work on it since right now, my difficulties include getting divorced and my partner no longer wanting to be my partner.
Since the goal of mindfulness is to focus your attention on the present, I believe that situation could benefit from using it. I would therefore be using problem-solving mode less frequently if I were more conscious.
If you practice being in the present moment for long enough, it can become second nature. It has to do with your ability to rein in your wandering thoughts. Another strategy to lessen detrimental mind-wandering is cognitive behavioral therapy for depression, which seeks to assist individuals in changing their thoughts and behaviors.
These days, it seems like a lot of our free time is spent looking through our phones instead of letting our brains roam. What potential effects might that have on the way our brains work?
The intriguing part, in my opinion, is that mind-wandering and social media use might share some common motivations. Wandering thoughts are quite social. People are being forced to complete these chores while being locked in small booths for our studies, and they keep coming out and saying, "I'm thinking about my pals." That suggests that people place a high value on keeping up with their peers.
Because social groupings are so important to us as a species, we spend the majority of our time trying to predict what other people will do. Social media, in my opinion, is attempting to fill some of the void left by mind-wandering. It's similar to consuming social information on the internet: You can either try to guess what your friend is doing or you can just look it up. However, there is a crucial distinction: When your mind wanders, you are organizing your own thoughts. Social media scrolling is more passive.
Is it possible to prevent our minds from wandering in potentially hazardous situations?
I wouldn't be certain that we now know when it would be wise to quit mind-wandering, even if it can be both a blessing and a curse. We are currently trying to map people's thinking across a variety of different task types in our investigations. With this method, we aim to be able to determine if mind-wandering is likely to be helpful or not, as well as when we should try to restrict it and when we shouldn't.
For instance, our research show that smarter people can let their minds wander more when the activity is simple than when it is difficult. It's possible that they are using their free time when nothing vital is requiring their attention in the outside world to think about other significant issues. This emphasizes the ambiguity surrounding whether mind wandering is always undesirable because this type of outcome suggests it may be advantageous in some situations.
This map, which depicts how people think in various circumstances, has proven crucial to our research. I'm going to concentrate on this task right now and probably for the remainder of my professional life.
