Brain spa

Had I known that a neuroscientist at Harvard, Dr. Malia Mason, and her colleagues wanted some subjects for a study to find out what the brain does when it is not doing anything spectacular, I would have pointed them to the players in our political scene. But as it turned out, they already had subjects for their study.

Their study entitled "Wandering Minds: The Default Network and the Stimulus Independent Thought" published in the most recent issue of the journal Science wanted to peer into what happens to the brain when it wanders. "Default network" or "baseline activity" is what they call the different brain regions that light up when brain is "resting." These brain parts do not seem to be particularly connected with one another in the way that some brain parts make high-five greetings when a person is engaged in conscious thought. "Stimulus Independent Thought" or SIT as the neuroscientists calls it, just means a thought that was not triggered by a specific "lure," in other words, random thoughts or daydreaming. They wanted to find out if the brain that is at rest looks the same as the brain that wanders.

The 19 subjects were made to memorize a certain string of letters or finger-tapping rhythms for 30 minutes each day for three days. Then on the fourth day, their memorization was interrupted at different times and they were asked if their thoughts were straying from the task at hand. Then on the fifth day, these wandering minds were asked to go through a brain scan (functional magnetic resonance imaging) so that the scientists could see what parts of the brain are active when their minds were wandering.

It appears that the brain parts known to be having their own light show when the brain is resting, are the same parts that party when we daydream. They also found that we daydream more when we are engaged in routine – when there is nothing new introduced to the stream of our lives. This, to scientists, shows that the brain keeps a level of electro-chemical "noise" even if you do not have the slightest desire to participate in the day by even just wearing sunglasses or whistling. Why? The scientists do not know yet but I have a hunch that below that baseline activity would severely harm your chances of getting back "online" so to speak, once your life as you are living it, requires you once again to make breakfast, go to work, pay the bills, clean your house, and do whatever it is you do so well.

Other scientists, like the one mentioned by Greg Miller in ScienceNOW Daily News on Jan. 18, 2007, cites a study by a neurologist, Marcus Raichle of Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. He and his team just looked at the brain activity of people who were not concentrating on any particular task and found the same brain regions, same with daydreaming, hummed with activity. He was the one who called it the "default network." Miller uncovered what I think was even more interesting: in another of Raichle’s published study, he found that a woman who suffered damage to this "default network" could not produce any spontaneous thoughts and he even went so far as to say that "her mind was empty." This prompted Raichle to speculate that there is a concoction brewing in that default network that accounts for what he referred to as our "inner life" that could be accounted by our ability to make spontaneous thoughts. This could mean that daydreaming is not exactly a useless trip to never-never land but like a breathing space in between what are supposed to be conscious, prolonged engagements with this thing called life.

This study gives a neurological picture to what I know from my experience and those of colleagues. After careful reading of materials, there is always a felt need to leave the materials for a while. In no time, the mind would wander and sometimes even fall asleep. But often, especially when you have trained it to do so with discipline, the mind would come back "online" after a few hours, and even carrying with the returning tides of synaptic activity, a scaffold on which one can hang and connect seemingly disparate ideas. Then, it is time; one can now begin to write.

But knowing that daydreaming may be some sort of brain spa also folds my perspective on idle minds into two. I do not know whether I will be more depressed or relieved by the sight people who really just seem to have made a career out of standing or sitting idly as the world spins. They are, neurologically speaking, really brains who are on an indefinite stay at the spa. I think the next studies should be on what kind of neurological peace could be achieved if you let your brain stay on the spa too long. Knowing now that the brain buzzes with activity even while at rest and daydreaming, then total neurological peace and quiet is something that should not be on our wishlist, at least while we are alive.

I have always wondered about that saying – an idle mind is the handiwork (or is it playground?) of the devil. Thanks to neuroscience, we finally have the address of this playground. For those who believe in the devil and thinks it is a being that is out to get you once you stray from a certain path and you are one of those on a mission to catch the devil while on this playground, it may help to learn brain science first. Unless you are a neurologist or neuroscientist who can read maps of the brain, you may want to pass up that mission because the playground is composed of strange rides like the posterior cingulate, precuneus, posterior lateral cortices and parts of the prefrontal cortex, all bearing addresses in, well – you (too!).

But for those who are in a constant journey to be at home with their own minds, you need not be able to read brain scans. Science has shown that it may just be normal for journeying minds to have that occasional spa so that we can come back to the kind of life that is closer, even if only by a breath or an idea, to our dreams.

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