Bravo! You bring good points in all the topics mentioned. It is about integration of the systems, not elimination of one. When we meditate it teaches us to be able to let some unwise thoughts go, and to consider action on the wise thoughts. It is not about not thinking at all! We also can't get rid of self or ego, but we can learn to hold them in a place that allows us to function as a wise human whereby we treat ourselves and others with kindness, compassion and honesty. Great comments. Thank you.
I am so glad you are writing about this as I've been so curious about this point re the DMN. I love the mind wandering/imagination state of being and have found it to be a close cousin to flow. Imaginative mind wandering also often seems to precede an intense flow state for me personally, or lead to intense flow states later when I take the ideas I came up with and do something with them. And, I also love your take on how the DMN is a connector in the brain, as this theme of integration is one that I've also been very interested in re flow (we seem to be able to access many more parts of ourselves during a flow state, my thought was because our inner critic/ego/self-consciousness is less active). In my interviews for my book The Flow Habit, I also noticed that those who come by this imaginative mind wandering easily seem to also get into flow more easily than others. My question is this--in some of the more recent studies of flow, brain scans show that the DMN seems to be significantly less activated during a flow state. Other studies have shown a similar quieting in activity in the pre-frontal cortex during flow states. I know that you're not speaking of the "flow state" directly in this article but since you do mention "creative flow" (which could refer both to a flow state experienced during a creative activity and the flow of ideas during imaginative mind wandering), I am curious about how those findings work into the mix when it comes to the overall role of the DMN. (I realize research is currently ongoing, so it could be we don't fully know yet.)
What an insightful comment — thank you for this! You've put your finger on exactly the puzzle the research is wrestling with right now.
Here's how I reconcile it: The DMN isn't one single thing, and flow doesn't switch it off wholesale. The clearest window into this is Charles Limb's brain-scan work with jazz musicians improvising: during that creative flow, the self-monitoring lateral prefrontal cortex goes quiet (the inner critic stepping back, exactly as you intuited), while the medial prefrontal cortex (a core hub of the default mode network) actually ramps up. So the part of the DMN tied to internally generated, self-expressive material gets more active in flow, *not* less. The studies that show "the DMN quieting" are mostly catching the self-referential, self-evaluative side going offline, which is also what "transient hypofrontality" is pointing at.
That's the integration you're describing: the imaginative, associative machinery starts cooperating with executive control instead of fighting it, and more of you comes online because the gatekeeper finally steps back.
Your two-phase observation is really the key, and beautifully put. Imaginative mind-wandering (rich in DMN activity, and generative) often seeds the absorbed flow that arrives later, when you take the idea and chase it down. Those are two different phases with two different brain signatures. So when I say "creative flow," I mostly mean that generative flow of ideas, which is why the DMN gets to be the hero of this piece even when its self-conscious side goes quiet.
You're right that none of this is fully settled. But the through-line seems to be that flow silences the self-conscious monitor, not the imagination itself. Can't wait to read The Flow Habit!
Thanks for your thoughtful response. You would have been a great interview as I was writing The Flow Habit! Chapter 2 is all about what the research says re what blocks flow, which is where the studies involving the DMN come into play. It seems like anything we can do to let go of what people think, and quiet our self-consciousness/inner critic/ego (wherever that resides in the brain) and open up to our own intuitive/imaginative/flow wanderings is healthy for us and our work, emotional wellbeing, and future creations. I really appreciate you diving into this concept of imaginative mind wandering as it's my other "favorite" state of being. Thanks again for your reply.
Thanks ! I think folks get caught up in echo chambers and thinking that one solution is the answer to their brain’s issues . When in reality it’s about tools to make our amazing brain more functional at different times of the day , throughout our life , and individualized to the type of brain we have . I am trying to tease my brain back to being more productive during the day and not inventing things and having “ cool ideas “ at night . I worked many years on call so it’s a process to regain good sleep habits .
I use a bit of meditation at night if my brain is on creative mode . It was productive on call , but not as I age .. lol . I need good sleep . I am starting to see improvement . While I do set priorities I am finding times to just let my brain creatively wander as you say . It doesn’t matter if it’s productive , because I think it can be just an exercise in inventing . Even this is good for the brain like you say .
What’s fascinating to me is that evidence shows that if you are thinking and inventing something , someone else may be doing the same across the world . So when I was brain wandering one day about how to pick up microplastic in the ocean and came up with an idea , I found that a group were already working on it . That was kinda cool because the pleasant brain game was already being implemented by someone else and I could focus back on my priorities , and not feel like I had to make it happen . LOL . I recently had a patient with a similar brain who would go down a rabbit hole with her inventing . It was keeping her from other things so I suggested still doing the creative process , just not acting on it . I think that for her (and I ) the motivation to continue and make it happen comes not from the creative process but from the need for finances to improve , or a desire to “ help the earth “ . So your point that creative process is good in and of itself helps a lot . It is not an exercise in futility but an exercise for the brain . Leonardo Da Vinci did it in spades , right ?
What of the two types of meditation? 'One-pointed', where you focus exclusively on one thing, and open-monitoring meditation, in which you observe the mind and the world (through your senses) doing whatever it does. Is it not just the first type that endeavours to shut off the DMN/monkey brain/daydream/free flow; whilst the later, mindfulness proper is simply observing the DMN (and sensory information etc) without judgement (and if you do judge, just observing that).
Most mediation research and reflection that I've read finds the one-pointed meditation to be a warm-up practice to be mastered before you get to the 'real game' of open meditation, in which you learn deeply about the mind and other matters through simple observation, like a child.
I enjoyed reading your reflections. I share your concern about simplistic good/bad narratives that creep into social scientific descriptions of complex aspects of human life, and mindfulness research is no exception.
I wonder whether casting the default mode network as a villain stems partly from the fact that in much of our scientific research, mindfulness has been extracted from the broader religious context in which it developed and repackaged as a stand-alone mental skill. In early Buddhism, mindfulness was a tool for cultivating insight into suffering, impermanence, and not-self, primarily for homeless monks and nuns who renounced all worldly entanglements. Within that framework, it could be argued that many forms of mind-wandering, even pleasant, creative, or productive ones, are distractions from the central task of awakening.
The interesting thing is that contemporary mindfulness programs often inherit some of these Buddhist assumptions while presenting themselves in largely secular terms. MBSR and MBCT are obviously not Buddhist training programs, but they still orient people toward observing impermanence, loosening attachment to thoughts and feelings, and questioning fixed ideas about the self. These are not value-neutral goals.
Speculating a bit, perhaps this missing context can help explain why mindfulness researchers sometimes slip into narratives in which the default mode network becomes "bad." If the aim is detachment from autobiographical memories and imagined future selves, then reduced default mode activity can look like a marker of progress. But once mindfulness is presented as a universally beneficial mental skill, it becomes harder to explain why daydreaming, imagination, future planning, and creativity should be treated as problems in the first place.
Perhaps mindfulness researchers need to be more explicit about the values and goals that make reduced default-mode activity seem desirable.
Behavioral economics taught us to see biases everywhere. That was an important contribution. It revealed that human judgment is often shaped by systematic distortions rather than pure rationality.
But perhaps an unintended consequence followed. As these ideas entered popular culture, many of us began treating mental processes primarily as problems to be corrected. The focus shifted toward controlling biases, suppressing unwanted thoughts, and overcoming cognitive errors.
Yet this raises a different question: what if some of these processes persist because they serve an adaptive function?
I've been exploring the possibility that perceived loss is a missing piece.
Imagination may not simply be a source of distraction or suffering. It may be one of the mechanisms through which we process losses of identity, status, belonging, certainty, or expected futures when direct action is unavailable.
This could explain why some simulations become so persistent. We don't endlessly revisit every possibility our minds generate. We tend to become trapped in those connected to something we feel we have lost, or fear losing.
If that is true, then imagination itself is not the villain. It may be one of the mind's most important adaptive capacities. The more interesting question becomes: what gives certain imagined scenarios their emotional energy, and why are some so difficult to let go of?
Your essay helped me think more clearly about that distinction.
Thank you for your impassioned words regarding a topic I also happen to be very passionate about! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your enhanced ability to break down the scientific research and data, along with opinions and insight of additional experts, into nuggets more easily understood and accessed by those of us whom upon attempting to dive into research data we're TRULY interested in understanding, sometimes appears in front of us as blahblahblahdullwordsdullwordsgobbledygook despite our best attempts to focus. Which actually brings me back around to the initial area you're delving into. Yay, I got there! After spending much of my life trying to "just stop" my wildass mind through various modes and means, I came to realize that behind every thwarted attempt was a level of myself that understood I WASN'T MEANT TO. It was awareness of what you stated in your post as: "they are the soul of human existence." Exactly! An awareness to chuck the list of facets we've been led to believe we need to rid ourselves of and swap it for recognition of the multitude of ways they actually SERVE us. They bring the magic!! And life is soooo boring where there's no magic.
I love this so much! Years ago I read a book by the meditating monk Gary Weber who described "snuffing his DMN out like a candle" in "Happiness Beyond Thought: A Practical Guide to Awakening." I wanted to throw that book in the ocean too! Your observation that this would literally result in a zombie is precisely what I as a philosopher thought as well. I think these people are after an easy Buddhist answer — turning off — rather than the difficult one of walking "the razors edge" towards the flourishing of life.
Thanks Scott. I'm writing a piece debunking the 'monkey mind' metaphor from the other direction — through primate cognition rather than neuroscience. Actual monkey minds turn out to be sophisticated, adaptive, also attentive. We borrowed the metaphor from a misreading of Buddhist texts and used it to pathologise the kind of cognition you're defending here.
Same pattern: take something rich and complex, reduce it to a problem to be solved, prescribe suppression. Your Pollan irony is a great case study — prosecute the imagination network for 400 pages, then end the book in awe of everything it gave you. Like Hotel California. You can check out of the default mode network any time you like, but you can never leave.
Reading this, I found myself wondering about a possible bridge to Jungian psychology. The DMN is often described as supporting self-referential thought, autobiographical memory, and internally generated meaning-making. Jung's "introverted feeling" also seems to describe a strongly inward, value-oriented mode of experience, where meaning and evaluation arise from within rather than from external cues.
I realize these are very different levels of explanation, but I'm curious whether there might be any partial correspondence between them. Do you think Jung's introverted feeling might be a useful phenomenological description of certain DMN-supported states of self-generated meaning, even if it's not a distinct neural mechanism? Or are these better understood as unrelated frameworks describing different aspects of mind?
What a rich question, thank you. I think you have framed it exactly right: the most defensible bridge here is phenomenological, not mechanistic.
Jung's introverted feeling is a beautiful description of a lived mode, where meaning and evaluation well up from within rather than from the room. The default mode network does seem to support that whole family of inward, self-referential, value-laden states. So yes, I do think introverted feeling can be a useful phenomenological description of certain DMN-supported moments of self-generated meaning. What I would resist is the next step, treating the DMN as the neural "home" of a Jungian function. The network is doing a great deal at once (autobiographical memory, future simulation, mentalizing, self-reflection), so introverted feeling would be one slice of that, not the whole thing. You might even find that introverted intuition maps onto the network's imaginative, simulation-heavy side just as naturally.
So I would hold them as complementary descriptions at different levels rather than one reducing to the other. Personality neuroscientists like Colin DeYoung (who I collaborate with regularly) have begun carefully bridging traits and brain systems, which makes me think the instinct behind your question is a good one, as long as we treat Jung's functions as evocative phenomenology rather than validated mechanisms. Both lenses can illuminate the same inner life without collapsing into each other.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I found your distinction between phenomenological and mechanistic explanations very helpful, and I especially appreciated the idea that both frameworks can illuminate the same inner life without reducing one to the other.
Thank you for writing this. I love the rename of the Default Mode Network to the Imagination Network. The ability of our minds to wander into the past, the present and the future is one of the things that make us human. One of the problems with our phone culture is that many of us are eliminating the times when our Imagination Network gets to turn on.
Oddly, right before I read your post, I asked Google AI a question about irony, namely, whether AI can recognize irony in my life descriptions and point them out to me. (The answer, which I expected, was affirmative.) And then I read about the examples of irony in your post. What a delightful synchronicity. It seems to me that "Imagination Network" could be a nickname for PBS. Or a show on PBS. Or at least a recurring feature on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. I'm sure that Fred Rogers would have agreed with your thoughts about imagination.
Great post! Thank you! The DMN is my favorite network, the one I use to solve all kinds of problems and find omissions in what I have written. I harvest its work every morning brushing my teeth! Here is my post to that effect: https://www.howtherapyworks.com/blog/tift95-favorite-brain-network
I love so much of your writing, but this one particularly spoke to me. I gave up the supposed goal of meditation to have a blank mind - it was never going to work for my mind and I wasn't sure the point - and focused on my experience of meditation as clarifying. Guided meditations provide space for my mind to practice important skills related to rumination, focus, acceptance, gratitude, etc. Yoga nidra can be such a powerful visualization tool. Thank you for outlining why this is the case. So many people miss out on the benefits of meditation and mindfulness because they believe the point is to have a mind without thoughts. And what kind of mind is that??? Thank you for your work.
Bravo! You bring good points in all the topics mentioned. It is about integration of the systems, not elimination of one. When we meditate it teaches us to be able to let some unwise thoughts go, and to consider action on the wise thoughts. It is not about not thinking at all! We also can't get rid of self or ego, but we can learn to hold them in a place that allows us to function as a wise human whereby we treat ourselves and others with kindness, compassion and honesty. Great comments. Thank you.
Thanks Ginny!
I am so glad you are writing about this as I've been so curious about this point re the DMN. I love the mind wandering/imagination state of being and have found it to be a close cousin to flow. Imaginative mind wandering also often seems to precede an intense flow state for me personally, or lead to intense flow states later when I take the ideas I came up with and do something with them. And, I also love your take on how the DMN is a connector in the brain, as this theme of integration is one that I've also been very interested in re flow (we seem to be able to access many more parts of ourselves during a flow state, my thought was because our inner critic/ego/self-consciousness is less active). In my interviews for my book The Flow Habit, I also noticed that those who come by this imaginative mind wandering easily seem to also get into flow more easily than others. My question is this--in some of the more recent studies of flow, brain scans show that the DMN seems to be significantly less activated during a flow state. Other studies have shown a similar quieting in activity in the pre-frontal cortex during flow states. I know that you're not speaking of the "flow state" directly in this article but since you do mention "creative flow" (which could refer both to a flow state experienced during a creative activity and the flow of ideas during imaginative mind wandering), I am curious about how those findings work into the mix when it comes to the overall role of the DMN. (I realize research is currently ongoing, so it could be we don't fully know yet.)
What an insightful comment — thank you for this! You've put your finger on exactly the puzzle the research is wrestling with right now.
Here's how I reconcile it: The DMN isn't one single thing, and flow doesn't switch it off wholesale. The clearest window into this is Charles Limb's brain-scan work with jazz musicians improvising: during that creative flow, the self-monitoring lateral prefrontal cortex goes quiet (the inner critic stepping back, exactly as you intuited), while the medial prefrontal cortex (a core hub of the default mode network) actually ramps up. So the part of the DMN tied to internally generated, self-expressive material gets more active in flow, *not* less. The studies that show "the DMN quieting" are mostly catching the self-referential, self-evaluative side going offline, which is also what "transient hypofrontality" is pointing at.
That's the integration you're describing: the imaginative, associative machinery starts cooperating with executive control instead of fighting it, and more of you comes online because the gatekeeper finally steps back.
Your two-phase observation is really the key, and beautifully put. Imaginative mind-wandering (rich in DMN activity, and generative) often seeds the absorbed flow that arrives later, when you take the idea and chase it down. Those are two different phases with two different brain signatures. So when I say "creative flow," I mostly mean that generative flow of ideas, which is why the DMN gets to be the hero of this piece even when its self-conscious side goes quiet.
You're right that none of this is fully settled. But the through-line seems to be that flow silences the self-conscious monitor, not the imagination itself. Can't wait to read The Flow Habit!
Thanks for your thoughtful response. You would have been a great interview as I was writing The Flow Habit! Chapter 2 is all about what the research says re what blocks flow, which is where the studies involving the DMN come into play. It seems like anything we can do to let go of what people think, and quiet our self-consciousness/inner critic/ego (wherever that resides in the brain) and open up to our own intuitive/imaginative/flow wanderings is healthy for us and our work, emotional wellbeing, and future creations. I really appreciate you diving into this concept of imaginative mind wandering as it's my other "favorite" state of being. Thanks again for your reply.
🙌
Great points Scott . That totally resonates .
So glad to hear it, Corrine!
Thanks ! I think folks get caught up in echo chambers and thinking that one solution is the answer to their brain’s issues . When in reality it’s about tools to make our amazing brain more functional at different times of the day , throughout our life , and individualized to the type of brain we have . I am trying to tease my brain back to being more productive during the day and not inventing things and having “ cool ideas “ at night . I worked many years on call so it’s a process to regain good sleep habits .
I use a bit of meditation at night if my brain is on creative mode . It was productive on call , but not as I age .. lol . I need good sleep . I am starting to see improvement . While I do set priorities I am finding times to just let my brain creatively wander as you say . It doesn’t matter if it’s productive , because I think it can be just an exercise in inventing . Even this is good for the brain like you say .
What’s fascinating to me is that evidence shows that if you are thinking and inventing something , someone else may be doing the same across the world . So when I was brain wandering one day about how to pick up microplastic in the ocean and came up with an idea , I found that a group were already working on it . That was kinda cool because the pleasant brain game was already being implemented by someone else and I could focus back on my priorities , and not feel like I had to make it happen . LOL . I recently had a patient with a similar brain who would go down a rabbit hole with her inventing . It was keeping her from other things so I suggested still doing the creative process , just not acting on it . I think that for her (and I ) the motivation to continue and make it happen comes not from the creative process but from the need for finances to improve , or a desire to “ help the earth “ . So your point that creative process is good in and of itself helps a lot . It is not an exercise in futility but an exercise for the brain . Leonardo Da Vinci did it in spades , right ?
This is so beautiful!
What of the two types of meditation? 'One-pointed', where you focus exclusively on one thing, and open-monitoring meditation, in which you observe the mind and the world (through your senses) doing whatever it does. Is it not just the first type that endeavours to shut off the DMN/monkey brain/daydream/free flow; whilst the later, mindfulness proper is simply observing the DMN (and sensory information etc) without judgement (and if you do judge, just observing that).
Most mediation research and reflection that I've read finds the one-pointed meditation to be a warm-up practice to be mastered before you get to the 'real game' of open meditation, in which you learn deeply about the mind and other matters through simple observation, like a child.
More on that coming soon!
Hi Scott,
I enjoyed reading your reflections. I share your concern about simplistic good/bad narratives that creep into social scientific descriptions of complex aspects of human life, and mindfulness research is no exception.
I wonder whether casting the default mode network as a villain stems partly from the fact that in much of our scientific research, mindfulness has been extracted from the broader religious context in which it developed and repackaged as a stand-alone mental skill. In early Buddhism, mindfulness was a tool for cultivating insight into suffering, impermanence, and not-self, primarily for homeless monks and nuns who renounced all worldly entanglements. Within that framework, it could be argued that many forms of mind-wandering, even pleasant, creative, or productive ones, are distractions from the central task of awakening.
The interesting thing is that contemporary mindfulness programs often inherit some of these Buddhist assumptions while presenting themselves in largely secular terms. MBSR and MBCT are obviously not Buddhist training programs, but they still orient people toward observing impermanence, loosening attachment to thoughts and feelings, and questioning fixed ideas about the self. These are not value-neutral goals.
Speculating a bit, perhaps this missing context can help explain why mindfulness researchers sometimes slip into narratives in which the default mode network becomes "bad." If the aim is detachment from autobiographical memories and imagined future selves, then reduced default mode activity can look like a marker of progress. But once mindfulness is presented as a universally beneficial mental skill, it becomes harder to explain why daydreaming, imagination, future planning, and creativity should be treated as problems in the first place.
Perhaps mindfulness researchers need to be more explicit about the values and goals that make reduced default-mode activity seem desirable.
This resonated with me.
Behavioral economics taught us to see biases everywhere. That was an important contribution. It revealed that human judgment is often shaped by systematic distortions rather than pure rationality.
But perhaps an unintended consequence followed. As these ideas entered popular culture, many of us began treating mental processes primarily as problems to be corrected. The focus shifted toward controlling biases, suppressing unwanted thoughts, and overcoming cognitive errors.
Yet this raises a different question: what if some of these processes persist because they serve an adaptive function?
I've been exploring the possibility that perceived loss is a missing piece.
Imagination may not simply be a source of distraction or suffering. It may be one of the mechanisms through which we process losses of identity, status, belonging, certainty, or expected futures when direct action is unavailable.
This could explain why some simulations become so persistent. We don't endlessly revisit every possibility our minds generate. We tend to become trapped in those connected to something we feel we have lost, or fear losing.
If that is true, then imagination itself is not the villain. It may be one of the mind's most important adaptive capacities. The more interesting question becomes: what gives certain imagined scenarios their emotional energy, and why are some so difficult to let go of?
Your essay helped me think more clearly about that distinction.
Thank you for your impassioned words regarding a topic I also happen to be very passionate about! I can't tell you how much I appreciate your enhanced ability to break down the scientific research and data, along with opinions and insight of additional experts, into nuggets more easily understood and accessed by those of us whom upon attempting to dive into research data we're TRULY interested in understanding, sometimes appears in front of us as blahblahblahdullwordsdullwordsgobbledygook despite our best attempts to focus. Which actually brings me back around to the initial area you're delving into. Yay, I got there! After spending much of my life trying to "just stop" my wildass mind through various modes and means, I came to realize that behind every thwarted attempt was a level of myself that understood I WASN'T MEANT TO. It was awareness of what you stated in your post as: "they are the soul of human existence." Exactly! An awareness to chuck the list of facets we've been led to believe we need to rid ourselves of and swap it for recognition of the multitude of ways they actually SERVE us. They bring the magic!! And life is soooo boring where there's no magic.
I love this so much! Years ago I read a book by the meditating monk Gary Weber who described "snuffing his DMN out like a candle" in "Happiness Beyond Thought: A Practical Guide to Awakening." I wanted to throw that book in the ocean too! Your observation that this would literally result in a zombie is precisely what I as a philosopher thought as well. I think these people are after an easy Buddhist answer — turning off — rather than the difficult one of walking "the razors edge" towards the flourishing of life.
exactly!! you got it Ed!
Thanks Scott. I'm writing a piece debunking the 'monkey mind' metaphor from the other direction — through primate cognition rather than neuroscience. Actual monkey minds turn out to be sophisticated, adaptive, also attentive. We borrowed the metaphor from a misreading of Buddhist texts and used it to pathologise the kind of cognition you're defending here.
Same pattern: take something rich and complex, reduce it to a problem to be solved, prescribe suppression. Your Pollan irony is a great case study — prosecute the imagination network for 400 pages, then end the book in awe of everything it gave you. Like Hotel California. You can check out of the default mode network any time you like, but you can never leave.
Love it!
Reading this, I found myself wondering about a possible bridge to Jungian psychology. The DMN is often described as supporting self-referential thought, autobiographical memory, and internally generated meaning-making. Jung's "introverted feeling" also seems to describe a strongly inward, value-oriented mode of experience, where meaning and evaluation arise from within rather than from external cues.
I realize these are very different levels of explanation, but I'm curious whether there might be any partial correspondence between them. Do you think Jung's introverted feeling might be a useful phenomenological description of certain DMN-supported states of self-generated meaning, even if it's not a distinct neural mechanism? Or are these better understood as unrelated frameworks describing different aspects of mind?
What a rich question, thank you. I think you have framed it exactly right: the most defensible bridge here is phenomenological, not mechanistic.
Jung's introverted feeling is a beautiful description of a lived mode, where meaning and evaluation well up from within rather than from the room. The default mode network does seem to support that whole family of inward, self-referential, value-laden states. So yes, I do think introverted feeling can be a useful phenomenological description of certain DMN-supported moments of self-generated meaning. What I would resist is the next step, treating the DMN as the neural "home" of a Jungian function. The network is doing a great deal at once (autobiographical memory, future simulation, mentalizing, self-reflection), so introverted feeling would be one slice of that, not the whole thing. You might even find that introverted intuition maps onto the network's imaginative, simulation-heavy side just as naturally.
So I would hold them as complementary descriptions at different levels rather than one reducing to the other. Personality neuroscientists like Colin DeYoung (who I collaborate with regularly) have begun carefully bridging traits and brain systems, which makes me think the instinct behind your question is a good one, as long as we treat Jung's functions as evocative phenomenology rather than validated mechanisms. Both lenses can illuminate the same inner life without collapsing into each other.
Thank you for taking the time to respond. I found your distinction between phenomenological and mechanistic explanations very helpful, and I especially appreciated the idea that both frameworks can illuminate the same inner life without reducing one to the other.
Enjoyed reading this, and agree!
Thank you for writing this. I love the rename of the Default Mode Network to the Imagination Network. The ability of our minds to wander into the past, the present and the future is one of the things that make us human. One of the problems with our phone culture is that many of us are eliminating the times when our Imagination Network gets to turn on.
Thanks, Olivia!
Oddly, right before I read your post, I asked Google AI a question about irony, namely, whether AI can recognize irony in my life descriptions and point them out to me. (The answer, which I expected, was affirmative.) And then I read about the examples of irony in your post. What a delightful synchronicity. It seems to me that "Imagination Network" could be a nickname for PBS. Or a show on PBS. Or at least a recurring feature on Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood. I'm sure that Fred Rogers would have agreed with your thoughts about imagination.
Love it!
Great post! Thank you! The DMN is my favorite network, the one I use to solve all kinds of problems and find omissions in what I have written. I harvest its work every morning brushing my teeth! Here is my post to that effect: https://www.howtherapyworks.com/blog/tift95-favorite-brain-network
AWESOME!
I love so much of your writing, but this one particularly spoke to me. I gave up the supposed goal of meditation to have a blank mind - it was never going to work for my mind and I wasn't sure the point - and focused on my experience of meditation as clarifying. Guided meditations provide space for my mind to practice important skills related to rumination, focus, acceptance, gratitude, etc. Yoga nidra can be such a powerful visualization tool. Thank you for outlining why this is the case. So many people miss out on the benefits of meditation and mindfulness because they believe the point is to have a mind without thoughts. And what kind of mind is that??? Thank you for your work.
Exactly!!!