Does your mind tend to wander as you carry out monotonous and repetitive work? Of course yes! But dreaming with open eyes implies something more than to contrast boredom: according to a new study, in fact, one mind that tends to wander It can confer a precise cognitive advantage.
It has been shown that an external stimulus given by low intensity electricity can literally change the way we think, producing a real peak in daydreams and, while these phenomena offer a welcome mental escape from boring tasks, they also have a simultaneous positive effect on our performance in what we are doing.
The stimuli have been applied to the frontal lobe region, which has previously been connected to these phenomena, and also hosts an important center in the executive control network that allows us to Organize and plan the future.
The surprising results of the study could derive from the convergence in a single brain region both of the mechanisms of controlling the thought of the executive functionality and of the activity of “liberation of thought” of spontaneous and self-director’s daydreams.
Over the past 15-20 years it has been shown that, unlike the localized neuralized activity linked to a single task, the mental digression implies the activation of a gigantic network that involves multiple parts of the brain.
This widespread involvement could be implicated in behavioral results such as creativity and mood, and could also contribute to our ability to stay focused on what we do while our mind goes for a walk.
Although it is assumed that people have a limited cognitive ability to pay attention, the truth could be much more complex, as external stimulation, while increasing the tendency of the mind to travel far, clearly improves the results of what we are doing, effectively enhancing the cognitive skills of the subject (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2015; 201421435).
