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Try this: clear your mind.
Try to think of absolutely nothing.
I’ll wait.
Not too easy, is it?
You probably thought about something, even if it was
“clear your mind, clear your mind, clear your mind!”
That’s normal.
In fact, it’s not only normal, it’s how you’re wired.
Thanks to a group of structures called the ​default mode network​,
your brain is always on, even when it’s not.
Luckily, once you know how it works,
you can find ways to control it.
We’ve known that the brain never really goes quiet
since at least the early 20th century.
Scientists back then actually discovered it by accident.
In studies, they’d ask people to perform mental tasks
while their brain activity was monitored.
Between tasks, the participants were asked
to rest quietly.
That would give the scientists a
baseline level of their brain activity.
Weirdly, when the participants were resting,
their brain activity didn’t calm down.
In fact, in certain brain regions, it increased
For the most part, scientists just treated this as
a bizarre quirk and never really studied it on its own.
That is, until the 1970s,
when Swedish brain physiologist
David Ingvar came on the scene.
Starting in 1974, he began compiling a bunch of
imaging results from studies that had
measured the blood flow
in people’s brains when they were at rest.
They let him see that specific brain regions were
turning on when active thinking turned off.
One main area he noticed was the frontal lobe,
which plays a big role in memory.
Fast-forward to now, and more advanced technology
has let scientists identify regions that
turn on all over the brain —
not just in the memory center, but also in areas that
play a role in planning, language, social cues,
and even consciousness as a whole.
Since these regions are active when
the brain is in its default mode —
that is, when you’re not consciously
thinking about anything —
scientists called them the “default mode network.”
Researchers have also studied exactly what’s going on
when the default mode network is active
by having people
rest quietly and periodically
asking them what they’re thinking.
“Whatcha thinkin’ ‘bout?”
“Nothin’. Just default mode stuff.”
They found that across the board, the brain at rest
conjured up mental images,
reminisced about past experiences,
and made plans for the future.
When you’re sitting quietly and suddenly come up with
the perfect comeback for a week-old insult
or start imagining what's gonna happen
during your upcoming trip to Iceland,
that’s the default mode network at play.
But just because it’s normal for your mind to wander
doesn’t mean that it’s always good.
On the one hand, the mind-wandering that happens
when the default mode network
is active is found to play
a big role in creative problem solving.
On the other hand, that same mind-wandering
can also involve rumination and obsessive thoughts.
In fact, people with depression
and obsessive-compulsive disorders
tend to have stronger connections between
the brain regions of the default mode network.
And even without that,
it’s obviously no good if your mind wanders
while you’re trying to concentrate on a test or
pay attention to what your boss is telling you.
So how do you control your default mode network?
There’s one strategy that’s shown
a lot of promise: meditation.
Specifically, something called
focused-attention meditation.
For a 2012 study, meditators were asked
to focus on their breath
while scientists scanned their brains.
Every time they caught their minds wandering,
the participants would hit a button.
Then they’d simply redirect their attention
to their breath.
Pressing a button meant scientists could look at
exactly what was happening
in their brains before, during, and after the meditators
noticed their minds wandering.
They found that, sure enough,
when the meditators’ minds started to wander,
the default mode network lit up.
When they became aware of it,
brain regions responsible
for detecting important events took over.
Then, when they regained focus,
the ​executive network,
​which handles cognitive control, came back online.
This all happened in a matter of seconds,
and the most experienced meditators did it the fastest.
Like a lot of brain-imaging experiments,
this was a small study.
But follow-up experiments have backed up
some of the same ideas.
For example, researchers have found that
experienced meditators
have stronger connections between
the default mode network
and the areas responsible for attention.
Your brain always wants to be focused on something.
It’s just a matter of redirecting that focus
to something calm and quiet
so it’s not so noisy up there.
And the more you practice redirecting your attention,
the better you’ll be at it.
There’s nothing wrong with the default mode network
letting your mind wander.
The key is not to let it be the boss of you.
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow Psych!
If you’re looking for something to
redirect your attention and
clear your mind a bit, hopefully this video helped.
And if not, we have lots of other videos you can watch!
The support of our Patreon community
is what has allowed us
to create all of these videos as free resources for
anyone who wants to learn.
If you’re not yet a patron
and want to learn more about how you can be
a part of all this,
just check out patreon.com/scishow.
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