Distraction: The unexpected benefits

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Leviathan Press:

Mind-wandering, also known as "mind wandering", refers to the phenomenon of shifting attention from the current task or external events to internal spontaneous thoughts and emotions. We all have experienced this phenomenon, and it is usually believed that mind-wandering is not a good thing because you want to concentrate but can't; but according to more and more research data, these views are not entirely correct. Some people's brains are indeed more efficient, so they wander.

There are many theories about mind wandering. For example, the Executive Failure Hypothesis believes that mind wandering reflects that the executive control system is unable to fully and effectively combat persistent disruptive thoughts. Resource-Control Theory believes that individuals use self-regulatory strategies to allocate attention resources to different thoughts and activities, and these strategies are affected by task complexity. The decoupling hypothesis believes that mind wandering consumes attention resources related to executive control. However, these theories do not seem to be sufficient to explain all cases of "mind wandering".

About 25 years ago, psychologist Jonathan Smallwood began studying mind-wandering.

At the time, his colleagues largely scoffed at the idea: How could we possibly study unconscious and unpredictable thoughts that occur when people are distracted, when they no longer pay attention to their surroundings or the task at hand? These thoughts are often unconnected to outward behavior.

But Smallwood, now at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, is continuing the research by using a tedious computer task[1] that aims to recreate a form of attention deficit: the tendency to pour milk into someone’s cup when they ask for coffee.

He started by asking subjects some basic questions to figure out when, why, and what their minds wandered, and then he began scanning participants’ brains to understand what was going on when their minds wandered.

Smallwood learned that pessimistic people tend to dwell on the past, while optimistic people tend to think about the future.[2] He came to believe that wandering through memory is essential for preparing for a rainy day. Although some types of mind-wandering—such as dwelling on unsolvable problems—can be linked to depression, Smallwood now sees mind-wandering not as a waste of time but as the brain trying to get something done when there’s nothing else to do.

Smallwood is an influential figure who co-authored a psychological study published in the 2015 Annual Review of Psychology[3] and is the first to acknowledge that many questions remain to be answered in the field.

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Are mind wandering and daydreaming the same thing?

I think they are similar in different situations. When you are on vacation and have a lot of free time, you might say you are daydreaming about what to do next. But when you are under stress, daydreaming is similar to mind wandering.

I think it makes more sense to talk about the underlying process: spontaneous thoughts or the dissociation of attention and perception — the separation of our thoughts from our perception of our environment. We all experience both of these processes when our minds wander and we daydream.

It usually takes a while for us to notice that our minds have wandered. How do you study mind wandering in others?

We initially gave people boring lab tasks so that their minds were more likely to wander, and we periodically asked them, “Did your mind wander?” while recording their brain activity in an MRI scanner.

Over time, I realized that if we want to know how the mind works in real-world activities, such as when people watch TV or go running, we can't rely on the data we have. The data doesn't speak.

So now, we're looking at these conditions. [4] We're not doing an experiment, we're just asking, "Are your thoughts wandering?" Now, we're asking them a lot of different questions, like, "Are your thoughts detailed? Are they positive? Are they distracting?"

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How and why did you decide to study mind wandering?

I began studying mind wandering at the beginning of my career, in the innocent years.

I didn't understand why no one was studying it. At the time, psychology was generally concerned with observable external behavior. I said to myself: What I want to know about my thoughts is not the external behavior. What I want to know is, why do they come from, where do they come from, and why do they persist even when disturbed?

At the same time, brain imaging techniques were booming, and neuroscientists learned that the brain is thinking about something even when there is no behavioral task. Large areas of the brain (now called the default mode network, or DMN) behaved abnormally: if people had a task to perform, their activity decreased[5].

The idea became popular when scientists linked brain activity to mind wandering. I had no idea what was happening when I was a PhD student at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, but I was lucky to have witnessed it all.

Functions of the default mode network: The brain's default mode network consists of a core and two subsystems. Jonathan Smallwood and colleagues collected the most commonly used terms in scientific papers that describe one or more of these activities. The words explain what each part does. The core: Thinking about oneself. The medial temporal lobe system: Thinking about what's going on, or episodic processes. The dorsomedial subsystem: Thinking about social processes. Smallwood said that when the mind wanders, all three are usually working at the same time.

So, would you say that mind-wandering is our brain’s default mode?

It turns out the situation is much more complicated than that.

Initially, the researchers were quite certain that the default mode network increased its activity very little when performing tasks. But these tasks were all externally focused—involving something we do in the outside world. Later, when the researchers asked subjects to do a task that did not require interaction with the environment, such as thinking about the future, the default mode network was activated [6].

We recently showed that even simpler tasks can activate the default mode network. If you show a series of shapes on a screen, such as a triangle or a square, and have people look at them and occasionally startle them, and ask them questions like, “On the last trial, which side was the triangle on?”—areas in the default mode network increase in activity when people make decisions.[7] If you think of the default mode network as just a mind-wandering system, that’s a big mistake.

But what both cases have in common is that the person is using information from memory. I now believe that the default mode network is essential for any thinking based on memory, including mind wandering.

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How to prove that this is indeed the case?

In a recent study[8], instead of asking people if they were paying attention, we took this a step further and had them read short, documentary sentences on a scrolling screen. Occasionally, we would remind them, saying “remember,” so that they would remember what we showed them, not just what they had read. We can make them remember.

We found that in this experiment, the brain scans looked very similar to when the mind was wandering. This is extremely important: we have more control over our thought patterns than when the mind is wandering unconsciously. Of course, there are no double benefits, and this can also be a weakness because it is not automatic. But we have done a lot of research on automatic behavior.

When people were asked to remember the items on the list, they recalled many of the things they had seen while their mind was wandering. This suggests that at least some of what we see when our mind is wandering is indeed relevant to memory retrieval. Now, we think that attention and perception become disconnected when people are lost in recollection.

Brain area activity during mind wandering

A: dorsal anterior cingulate cortex B: ventromedial prefrontal cortex C: posterior cingulate cortex D: right temporoparietal junction E: dorsomedial prefrontal cortex F: left lateral prefrontal cortex. In three different experiments, when subjects admitted that they were distracted, the corresponding brain areas were activated, as shown in the above functional magnetic resonance imaging scans. These areas all belong to the default mode network system in the brain.

Have you ever asked people what they are thinking?

The past and the future really seem to dominate people's thinking [9]. I think things like mind wandering are the brain's attempt to figure out what's going on so we can plan for the future. This way of thinking has become ingrained in us as humans have conquered the world. We can hardly be sure that anything we do at any given moment is only going to be useful for a short time.

This is the fundamental difference between humans and animals. I am not saying that other animals cannot imagine the future, but that our world is built on our ability to imagine the future. We can summarize past experiences and build a better future. I believe that in the natural competition over millions of years, those animals that "look back on history and look forward to the future" defeated those "short-sighted" animals, and finally humans emerged, a species that can summarize the past and use it for the future.

People also frequently lose their minds in social situations.[10] This makes sense, since we must collaborate with others to achieve nearly all of our goals, and it’s harder to predict what other people are thinking than when the sun will rise.

While it’s helpful to let your mind wander, isn’t it frustrating to constantly look back on the past?

That’s right. We found that negative emotions are often associated with dwelling on the past.

For example, for a scientist like me, mind wandering is very helpful for solving scientific problems. But imagine if the situation changes and I encounter a series of unsolvable problems, I might keep dwelling on the past. The brain will keep activating the problem-solving mechanism, even though it is not helpful for solving the problem. If the problem I am facing now is divorce, my wife wants to cut off ties with me, and I only have a problem-solving system that can only daydream, it will not only not help me, but also make me frustrated, and I will have no choice but to let go.

I think this is where mindfulness comes in. The idea of ​​mindfulness is to focus your attention on the present moment, so if I'm more focused, I won't go into problem-solving mode as often.

Depending on the context, mind wandering can be helpful, neutral, or harmful. When mind wandering bothers you — perhaps because you’re dwelling on an unsolvable problem — mindfulness practices like meditation can help. © Real Simple

If you practice mindfulness long enough, it may become a habit, which is related to controlling mind wandering. Cognitive behavioral therapy for depression, which aims to help people change the way they think and behave, is another way to reduce harmful mind wandering.

Today, it seems that our free time, which might have previously allowed our minds to wander, is spent scrolling through our phones. How do you think this changes brain function?

I think what’s interesting about social media browsing and mind wandering is that they may share the same motivations. Mind wandering is very social. In our studies [10], we locked people in cubicles and asked them to do these tasks, and when they came out they kept saying, “I was thinking about my friends.” This tells us that it’s really important to stay connected to other people.

As humans, social groups are very important to us, so we spend most of our time trying to predict what other people are going to do, and I think social media fills some of the gap that would otherwise be left for mind wandering. It's like getting social information: you can try to imagine what your friends are doing, or you can look it up online. Of course, there's an important difference: when you're mind wandering, your thoughts are more active, while scrolling through social media is more passive.

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Is there a way to prevent our mind from wandering when we are in danger?

Mind-wandering can have benefits, and certainly can have harms, but what I'm not sure about is whether we know when to stop it. In our current research, we're trying to map the patterns of people's brains as they navigate different tasks. We hope that this approach will help us understand when we should and shouldn't let our minds wander, and how to stop it.

For example, in our study, we found that people with higher IQs were less likely to lose focus when faced with difficult tasks, but more likely to lose focus when faced with easy tasks[11]. When the external world does not require them to focus on other important things, they are more likely to use their free time by losing focus. This suggests that it is uncertain whether mind wandering is harmful, but in this case, it is useful.

This “map” is of great significance to our research. What I want to do now is to focus on this “map”, which may also be a major focus of my entire career.

References:

[1]www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0900234106

[2]journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0077554

[3]www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-psych-010814-015331

[4]www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2102565118

[5]www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014030

[6]www.jneurosci.org/content/41/24/5243

[7]www.nature.com/articles/s41583-021-00474-4

[8]elifesciences.org/articles/74011

[9]www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2589004221001000

[10]www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1053811920302524

[11]www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-11764-y

By Tim Vernimmen

Translated by Zhao Hang

Proofreading/Rabbit's Light Footsteps

Original article/knowablemagazine.org/article/mind/2022/science-wandering-mind

This article is based on the Creative Commons License (BY-NC) and is published by Zhao Hang on Leviathan

The article only reflects the author's views and does not necessarily represent the position of Leviathan