Daydreaming Is Really Complex Problem-Solving 138
beefsprocket writes "ScienceDaily reports that 'A new University of British Columbia study finds that our brains are much more active when we daydream than previously thought. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (abstract), finds that activity in numerous brain regions increases when our minds wander. It also finds that brain areas associated with complex problem-solving — previously thought to go dormant when we daydream — are in fact highly active during these episodes. "Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness," says lead author, Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology. "But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream — much more active than when we focus on routine tasks."'"
Re:This won't go over well (Score:5, Insightful)
It's true (Score:4, Insightful)
This isn't surprising (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is this really surprising to you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Daydreaming is basically shutting off (or at least ignoring) the bulk of the sensory inputs into your brain
Many people do the same thing when they're focusing on a particular task. While I'm personally very bad at this (which is perhaps why I'm so easily distracted), several people I know become hyperfocused to the point that they actually don't hear their name being called, or the phone ringing. I don't see how that's any less work for the brain than your definition of daydreaming.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
Did you yell "brick" or "duck"?
Re:This won't go over well (Score:5, Insightful)
Daydreaming, and taking cat-naps at work are also helpful for productivity. Unfortunately Managers don't read science articles, and when they do they dismiss the results as a joke because they think they are smarter than scientists.
Re:Is this really surprising to you? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'd say it depends on the task.
Don't think so. Maybe it's mentioned in the article (which I haven't yet read), but whatever focus you think you have expires every 20-25 minutes, if not sooner. That "shutting off", to use the OP's words, is what's key here, not what follows.
Ask yourself how often you've been at work and simply interrupted things to refresh your coffee, or watched something interesting on television and welcomed the commercial break. In movie theatres, who doesn't get up to go for popcorn? Or for the real nerds, watching a porno movie and getting distracted by some computer equipment that happens to be part of the set.
You can pretend you can maintain concentration or focus, but that's a self deceit that yields little that's useful. By contrast, most forms of meditation, for example, encourage following our natural ebbs and flows of concentration, even if what we're striving to focus on is absolutely nothing.
Re:Is this really surprising to you? (Score:3, Insightful)
Is that how it is for you? For me, daydreaming happens most strongly when I open my sensory inputs, as on the fine spring days we've been having here this past week. It's when the inspiration of the world joins with the directions of my thought, rather than the two pulling in different directions. More often most of the sensory input gets suppressed because it's "distraction," not pertinent to the task assigned by my "executive network" as these academic clowns like to call it in this paper - which is really a pretty good paper, in that they're recognizing that the most powerful thought goes with nature (at least our inner nature - the "default network") rather than against it.
That can also explain why American culture was at its strongest when much of our nation was at the frontier - directly facing nature. The daydream inducing nature of being nature facing may have played as large a role as the discipline inducing nature of taming a wilderness. In civilization you can do quite a bit with no imagination at all. On a frontier, lack of imagination is often the prelude to failure and death. And that imagination had better be damn well keyed to the specifics of the current environment - to a very vital mindfulness.
Re:This won't go over well (Score:4, Insightful)
Using daydreaming and alternate tasks sometimes frees the mind from a locked circle and can give you a new perspective of a problem.