Ponders the connection between daily reverie and intellectual enhancement.
A recent study from Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary has challenged the common belief that daydreaming is a distraction or a waste of time. Instead, the researchers found that **allowing your mind to wander during a simple task can actually contribute to learning and improve performance**[1].
The study, led by lead author Péter Simor, PhD, and senior author Péter Németh, PhD, involved 27 participants who completed a simple learning task while their brain activity was recorded using high-density electroencephalography (EEG). The participants engaged in a probabilistic learning task, a simple exercise that involved extracting information but without requiring high levels of attention[1].
Contrary to expectations, participants who allowed their minds to wander completed the task just as effectively as those who stayed focused throughout. This finding challenges assumptions that daydreaming negatively affects performance[1].
Simor and his collaborators hypothesized that mind wandering, linked to local sleep, might facilitate information processing, especially in tasks that do not require effortful attention and which are learned without conscious awareness[1]. One possibility is that mind wandering is linked to sleep-like neural activity, which facilitates information processing and memory consolidation. Another possibility is that mind wandering reflects a state when controlled, model-based processes are attenuated, and associative, automatic, model-free learning is increased[1].
Caroline Fenkel, DSW, LCSW, commented on the findings, stating that the study challenges the idea that "focus equals learning." Fenkel noted that the brain might be learning in the background while daydreaming[1].
Following task completion, the participants filled in a questionnaire assessing how focused they perceived themselves to have been while engaged in the exercise. The researchers found that the participants who daydreamed during the task had brain activity indicative of a "sleep-like" state[1]. Lead author Péter Simor, PhD, and his colleagues believe that daydreaming, as its name aptly suggests, is a form of "wakeful rest."
Simor and Németh caution that daydreaming is not just the same as sleep, but a state when the brain transiently decouples from the demands of the external environment to engage in internally dominated cognitive processes[1]. The mechanisms behind how mind wandering might help enhance learning capacity remain unclear.
Simor and his collaborators plan to continue this research, including studies on patients with narcolepsy and an intervention study using noninvasive brain stimulation to enhance sleep-like slow-wave activity[1]. The study was published in The Journal of Neuroscience.
[1] Simor, P., Németh, P., et al. (2022). Mind wandering during wakefulness enhances probabilistic learning. The Journal of Neuroscience, 42(20), 3736-3748. doi: 10.1523/JNEUROSCI.0770-21.2022
- The study published in The Journal of Neuroscience by Simor, Németh, and their team suggests that daydreaming, during a simple task, might contribute to learning and improve performance, challenging the common belief that it is a distraction or a waste of time.
- Carine Fenkel, DSW, LCSW, commented on the findings, arguing that the study questions the notion that "focus equals learning," suggesting that the brain might be learning in the background while daydreaming.
- The study, which involved 27 participants, found that participants who allowed their minds to wander during the task had brain activity indicative of a "sleep-like" state, lending support to the hypothesis that mind wandering is linked to sleep-like neural activity.
- The research in the field of psychology, neurology, and psychiatry, allied with other mental health disciplines, aims to unravel the mechanisms behind how mind wandering might help enhance learning capacity, opening opportunities for health-and-wellness interventions and treatments for conditions like ADHD.
- Simor and Németh anticipate further research, including studies on patients with narcolepsy and an intervention study using noninvasive brain stimulation to enhance sleep-like slow-wave activity, to delve deeper into understanding the relationship between daydreaming, learning, and mental health.
