harvard wandering mind study

November 24, 2010

A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy One

New research underlines the wisdom of being absorbed in what you do

By Jason Castro

We spend billions of dollars each year looking for happiness, hoping it might be bought, consumed, found, or flown to. Other, more contemplative cultures and traditions assure us that this is a waste of time (not to mention money). ‘Be present’ they urge. Live in the moment, and there you’ll find true contentment.

Sure enough, our most fulfilling experiences are typically those that engage us body and mind, and are unsullied by worry or regret. In these cases, a relationship between focus and happiness is easy to spot. But does this relationship hold in general, even for simple, everyday activities? Is a focused mind a happy mind? Harvard psychologists Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert decided to find out.

In a recent study published in Science, Killingsworth and Gilbert discovered that an unnervingly large fraction of our thoughts - almost half - are not related to what we’re doing. Surprisingly, we tended to be elsewhere even for casual and presumably enjoyable activities, like watching TV or having a conversation. While you might hope all this mental wandering is taking us to happier places, the data say otherwise. Just like the wise traditions teach, we’re happiest when thought and action are aligned, even if they’re only aligned to wash dishes.

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The ingredients of simple, everyday happiness are tough to study in the lab, and aren’t easily measured with a standard experimental battery of forced choices, eye-tracking, and questionnaires. Day to day happiness is simply too fleeting. To really study it’s causes, you need to catch people in the act of feeling good or feeling bad in real-world settings.

To do this, the researchers used a somewhat unconventional, but powerful, technique known as experience sampling. The idea behind it is simple. Interrupt people at unpredictable intervals and ask them what they’re doing, and what’s on their minds. If you do this many times a day for many days, you can start to assemble a kind of quantitative existential portrait of someone. Do this for many people, and you can find larger patterns and tendencies in human thought and behavior, allowing you to correlate moments of happiness with particular kinds of thought and action.

To sample our inner lives, the team developed an iPhone app that periodically surveyed people’s thoughts and activities. At random times throughout the day, a participant’s iPhone would chime, and present him with a brief questionnaire that asked how happy he was (on a scale from 1-100), what he was doing, and if he was thinking about what he was doing. If subjects were indeed thinking of something else, they reported whether that something else was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Responses to the questions were standardized, which allowed them to be neatly summarized in a database that tracked the collective moods, actions, and musings of about 5000 total participants (a subset of 2250 people was used in the present study).

In addition to awakening us to just how much our minds wander, the study clearly showed that we’re happiest when thinking about what we’re doing. Although imagining pleasant alternatives was naturally preferable to imagining unpleasant ones, the happiest scenario was to not be imagining at all. A person who is ironing a shirt and thinking about ironing is happier than a person who is ironing and thinking about a sunny getaway.

What about the kinds of activities we do, though? Surely, the hard-partiers and world travelers among us are happier than the quiet ones who stay at home and tuck in early? Not necessarily. According to the data from the Harvard group’s study, the particular way you spend your day doesn’t tell much about how happy you are. Mental presence - the matching of thought to action - is a much better predictor of happiness.

The happy upshot of this study is that it suggests a wonderfully simple prescription for greater happiness: think about what you’re doing. But be warned that like any prescription, following it is very different from just knowing it’s good for you. In addition to the usual difficulties of breaking bad or unhelpful habits, your brain may also be wired to work against your attempts stay present.

Recent fMRI scanning studies show that even when we’re quietly at rest and following instructions to think of nothing in particular, our brains settle into a conspicuous pattern of activity that corresponds to mind-wandering. This signature ‘resting’ activity is coordinated across several widespread brain areas , and is argued by many to be evidence of a brain network that is active by default. Under this view our brains climb out of the default state when we’re bombarded with input, or facing a challenging task, but tend to slide back into it once things quiet down.

Why are our brains so intent on tuning out? One possibility is that they’re calibrated for a target level of arousal. If a task is dull and can basically be done on autopilot, the brain conjures up its own exciting alternatives and sends us off and wandering. This view is somewhat at odds with the Killingsworth and Gilbert’s findings though, since subjects wandered even on ‘engaging’ activities. Another, more speculative possibility is that wandering corresponds to some important mental housekeeping or regulatory process that we’re not conscious of. Perhaps while we check out, disparate bits of memory and experience are stitched together into a coherent narrative – our sense of self.

Of course, it’s also possible that wandering isn’t really ‘for’ anything, but rather just a byproduct of a brain in a world that doesn’t punish the occasional (or even frequent) flight of fancy. Regardless of what prompts our brains to settle into the default mode, its tendency to do so may be the kiss of death for happiness. As the authors of the paper elegantly summarize their work: “a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”

On the plus side, a mind can be trained to wander less. With regular and dedicated meditation practice, you can certainly become much more present, mindful, and content. But you’d better be ready to work. The most dramatic benefits only really accrue for individuals, often monks, who have clocked many thousands of hours practicing the necessary skills (it’s not called the default state for nothing).

The next steps in this work will be fascinating to see, and we can certainly expect to see more results from the large data set collected by Killingsworth and Gilbert. It will be interesting to know, for example, how much people vary in their tendency to wander, and whether differences in wandering are associated with psychiatric ailments. If so, we may be able to tailor therapeutic interventions for people prone to certain cognitive styles that put them at risk for depression, anxiety, or other disorders.

In addition to the translational potential of this work, it will also be exciting to understand the brain networks responsible for wandering, and whether there are trigger events that send the mind into the wandering or focused state. Though wandering may be bad for happiness, it is still fascinating to wonder why we do it.

Are you a scientist? Have you recently read a peer-reviewed paper that you want to write about? Then contact Mind Matters co-editor Gareth Cook, a Pulitzer prize -winning journalist at the Boston Globe, where he edits the Sunday Ideas section. He can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com

A wandering mind is an unhappy mind

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1 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. [email protected]
PMID: 21071660
DOI: 10.1126/science.1192439

We developed a smartphone technology to sample people's ongoing thoughts, feelings, and actions and found (i) that people are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is and (ii) found that doing so typically makes them unhappy.

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Mind is a frequent, but not happy, wanderer: People spend nearly half their waking hours thinking about what isn’t going on around them

People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they're doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. So says a study that used an iPhone web app to gather 250,000 data points on subjects' thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their lives.

The research, by psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University, is described in the journal Science .

"A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind," Killingsworth and Gilbert write. "The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost."

Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn't going on around them: contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all. Indeed, mind-wandering appears to be the human brain's default mode of operation.

To track this behavior, Killingsworth developed an iPhone web app that contacted 2,250 volunteers at random intervals to ask how happy they were, what they were currently doing, and whether they were thinking about their current activity or about something else that was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant.

Subjects could choose from 22 general activities, such as walking, eating, shopping, and watching television. On average, respondents reported that their minds were wandering 46.9 percent of time, and no less than 30 percent of the time during every activity except making love.

"Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities," says Killingsworth, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard. "This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present."

Killingsworth and Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, found that people were happiest when making love, exercising, or engaging in conversation. They were least happy when resting, working, or using a home computer.

"Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people's happiness," Killingsworth says. "In fact, how often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged."

The researchers estimated that only 4.6 percent of a person's happiness in a given moment was attributable to the specific activity he or she was doing, whereas a person's mind-wandering status accounted for about 10.8 percent of his or her happiness.

Time-lag analyses conducted by the researchers suggested that their subjects' mind-wandering was generally the cause, not the consequence, of their unhappiness.

"Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and to 'be here now,'" Killingsworth and Gilbert note in Science. "These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."

This new research, the authors say, suggests that these traditions are right.

Killingsworth and Gilbert's 2,250 subjects in this study ranged in age from 18 to 88, representing a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and occupations. Seventy-four percent of study participants were American.

More than 5,000 people are now using the iPhone web app the researchers have developed to study happiness, which can be found at www.trackyourhappiness.org .

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Materials provided by Harvard University . Original written by Steve Bradt, Harvard Staff Writer. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.

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Matthew A. Killingsworth, Daniel T. Gilbert. A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind . Science , 2010; 330 (6006): 932 DOI: 10.1126/science.1192439

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On the relationship between mind wandering and mindfulness

Angelo Belardi 1 ,
Leila Chaieb 2 ,
Alodie Rey-Mermet 1 ,
Florian Mormann 2 ,
Nicolas Rothen 1 ,
Juergen Fell 2 &
Thomas P. Reber 1 , 2

Scientific Reports volume 12 , Article number: 7755 ( 2022 ) Cite this article

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Mind wandering (MW) and mindfulness have both been reported to be vital moderators of psychological wellbeing. Here, we aim to examine how closely associated these phenomena are and evaluate the psychometrics of measures often used to quantify them. We investigated two samples, one consisting of German-speaking unpaid participants (GUP, n $=$ 313) and one of English-speaking paid participants (EPP, n $=$ 228) recruited through MTurk.com. In an online experiment, we collected data using the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) and the sustained attention to response task (SART) during which self-reports of MW and meta-awareness of MW were recorded using experience sampling (ES) probes. Internal consistency of the MAAS was high (Cronbachs $\alpha$ of 0.96 in EPP and 0.88 in GUP). Split-half reliability for SART measures and self-reported MW was overall good with the exception of SART measures focusing on Nogo trials, and those restricted to SART trials preceding ES in a 10 s time window. We found a moderate negative association between trait mindfulness and MW as measured with ES probes in GUP, but not in EPP. Our results suggest that MW and mindfulness are on opposite sides of a spectrum of how attention is focused on the present moment and the task at hand.

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Introduction.

Waking experience can be described as a stream of thoughts, perceptions, and emotions that come in and out of the focus of our conscious awareness. Mind wandering (MW) refers to our thoughts becoming decoupled from an ongoing task and coupled to thoughts and feelings not being subject to the task at hand or our surroundings 1 . In comparison, mindfulness refers to the mental act of intentionally resting the focus of awareness on a particular subject of experience in the present moment without judgment 2 . These constructs appear to emphasise aspects which lie on opposite sides of a spectrum of how intentional, focused, and self-aware one is regarding the thoughts and perceptions that make up one’s conscious experience 3 .

In light of these conceptual considerations, it seems surprising that statistical associations between measures of MW and mindfulness are rather low 3 , 4 , 5 . One possible explanation for this may be the low reliability of the psychometric tools used to measure these constructs. Another possibility could be that meta-awareness of MW 6 , 7 , i.e., awareness of the fact that ones contents of consciousness is decoupling from an ongoing task, moderates the relationship between mindfulness and MW. To investigate these questions, we first assessed the psychometrics of a well-established mindfulness questionnaire and self-report measures of MW and meta-awareness thereof in a large sample from an online study. Then we estimated the associations between measures of MW, mindfulness, and meta-awareness.

Evidence for the importance of both MW and mindfulness for psychological wellbeing has been reported numerous times in the literature. Increased propensity to MW was associated with reduced affect 8 and in its extreme form MW can result in persistent negative and repetitive thoughts leading to rumination. Such rumination is at the heart of neurocognitive models of depression 9 , 10 , 11 . Furthermore, distraction due to MW can potentially cause physical harm e.g. when driving 12 , operating heavy machinery 13 , or when working as a medical professional 14 . Excessive MW may also interfere with career goals by affecting work and educational performance 15 . While a majority of studies focus on negative consequences, MW may also facilitate future planning, goal setting, and aid creative problem solving 16 , 17 , 18 . For example, Medea and colleagues 18 found that self-generated cognition during an episode of MW may allow the development of more concrete personal goals.

In contrast, mindfulness has been associated predominantly with an increased feeling of wellbeing. The concept of mindfulness has its origins in eastern philosophy and is closely linked to processes of awareness and attention. Mindfulness describes a state in which a person willingly chooses the focus of conscious experience and takes constant notice of their contents of consciousness. Practicing to achieve this mindful state has been a central tenet of traditional Buddhist meditation, and has been introduced in western cultures as a secular form of mental practice and flavours in psychotherapy, such as e.g., the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program or acceptance and commitment therapy 2 , 19 , 20 .

A widely used task to experimentally elicit MW is the sustained attention to response task (SART) 21 . Participants view, for example, a stream of numbers from 0 to 9 appearing in a random sequence and at a constant rate. The participants’ task is to press a button in response to all non-target digits (Go trials) except for one – the target, where they are required to withhold their button press (i.e., the Nogo trial, such as the number 7). Several dependent variables have been used in the SART, such as the performance of the task (i.e., the error rate on Go trials and Nogo trials), the mean reaction time (RT) in Go trials and the variance of these RTs, as well as scores combining performance and RT (e.g. a skills index, calculated as accuracy/RT) 22 . Variants of the task include querying participants intermittently in defined intervals as to whether their mind was ‘on task’ or ‘off task’ using experience sampling (ES) probes to measure MW. Furthermore, meta-awareness of MW is queried after ES of MW in some studies immediately after ‘off task’ responses 23 , 24 . In addition to the self-reports from ES, low performance 25 , 26 , 27 as well as long and widely dispersed RTs 16 in the SART are considered evidence for low sustained attention and potentially for MW. Several versions of the paradigm combining ES probes and SART have been used in previous research. For example, some studies restricted performance and RT analyses to short time windows immediately preceding appearance of the ES probe 16 , 27 . Other studies varied SART difficulty by either adding auditory noise 28 , by making the number stream predictable 29 , or by increasing the inter-stimulus interval (ISI) 30 . Taken together, there is a variety of ways in which the SART is used to elicit and assess MW.

Tools to measure mindfulness, on the other hand, consist predominantly of self-report questionnaires. One of the most commonly used questionnaires is the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) 31 . Previous assessments of the MAAS found that it has a single factor structure and overall robust reliability (Cronbach’s $\alpha$ between 0.8 and 0.87) 31 . External validity was evaluated with numerous questionnaires assessing a variety of related constructs such as everyday attention, personality traits and anxiety 31 , 32 . Because of the high importance of this questionnaire in mindfulness research, we explored the possibility of shorter versions of the MAAS, based on only 5 and 3 items, which would be quicker to implement in future research.

Despite the close conceptual relationship between MW and mindfulness, estimates of the strength of their association have been surprisingly low 3 , 4 , 5 . Furthermore, none of these previous studies reported an estimate of reliability for ES of MW, making the interpretation of this association difficult. See Table 1 for a detailed summary of previous findings. Together, there is only weak evidence to suggest that a direct measure of MW such as ES during the SART correlates with MAAS scores. Moreover, when these associations were reported, they were moderate at best.

Additional evidence for the relationship comes from a related line of research that investigates whether mindfulness training impacts direct and indirect measures of MW (for a review, see 33 ). Such intervention studies found that the practice of mindfulness usually improved SART performance 3 , 34 , 76 , 36 , 37 , 38 and reduced the frequency of self-reported MW in some cases 36 , 39 but not in others 34 , 38 . Moreover, one study reported higher MAAS scores after mindfulness training 35 . Similarly to the findings of those correlation studies reported before, in these mindfulness training studies the associations between the direct MW measure and mindfulness is not as strong as one might expect.

One possible explanation of low associations between ES of MW and MAAS scores could be that queryi ng participants for whether they were on or off task alone conflates over two forms of MW that are opposingly linked to mindfulness, namely MW with and without meta-awareness 6 . This hypothesis has been put forward by Smallwood and Schooler 7 , and initial empirical evidence for the importance of considering meta-awareness was gathered by the same authors in an ensuing study 9 . Here, ‘zone outs’ (MW without awareness) were linked to higher inhibition errors in an ongoing task while ‘tune outs’ (MW with awareness) were not. How these ‘zone out’ and ‘tune out’ propensities are linked to trait mindfulness, however, seems unclear in the previous literature. Deng et al. 4 found no significant relationship between either the ‘zone out’ or the ’tune out’ rate with trait mindfulness as measured by the MAAS. A more recent study 5 found both rates to be negatively associated with MAAS scores. Together there is inconsistent evidence on the role of meta-awareness as potential mediator between MW and trait mindfulness. Another possible explanation for low correlations between SART, ES, and MAAS is insufficient reliability of measures derived from these instruments. Reliability is an often overlooked quality metric in cognitive tasks while it is routinely reported for questionnaires 40 . Reliability estimates are important as they determine an upper limit of how large correlations between two measures can be. For all the individual measures for mindfulness and MW discussed above, robust psychometric properties have been reported before, though rarely combined and sometimes in small samples: MAAS 31 , 32 , specific SART measures with and without ES for MW 41 , 35 , 36 , 37 , 45 . Table 1 lists all referenced studies that measured the MAAS and/or the SART with or without ES of MW. The table depicts sample sizes, reliability estimates and estimates of association. Most importantly, this table shows that none of the previous studies employed all three measures (MAAS, SART, and ES of MW) and reported both, reliabilities of all measures as well as correlations between all of them. The present study aims to fill this gap and offers data from two new large samples.

Overall the aim of this study is to assess the psychometric quality of several measures for MW and mindfulness from the SART, MAAS, ES of MW and ES of meta-awareness. In a second step, we want to gain an estimate for the statistical association between these constructs. We combined ES of MW during the SART with an established measure of mindfulness in an online study in two large samples collected in an online experiment and by doing so add psychometric estimates for these measures gained in an online study and assessed together.

We recruited two samples of participants for a German and an English version of the experiment. In our first recruitment phase we targeted German-speaking participants through the participant pool of our institution, made up of students and volunteers from the public. Throughout the study, we refer to this sample as German-speaking unpaid participants (GUP). In a second phase, we recruited and paid participants predominantly through Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT, mturk.com) for an English version of the experiment. We refer to this sample as English-speaking paid participants (EPP). All participants first answered a questionnaire on demographics and the MAAS, then they performed a 20 min version of the SART during which ES probes of MW and meta-awareness wee obtained (see “ Methods ” section).

Sample differences

We initially planned to report our findings as one sample, since the online experiment was identical except for the language. However, after finding significant differences between our two samples in the SART and ES data, we decided post-hoc to report all findings separately for GUP and EPP (see Table 2 for sample differences between all main measures). Most strikingly, EPP reported significantly less than half as often to be ‘off task’ than the GUP $(\hbox {t}(519.01) = -10.06$ , p < .001, d $=$ 0.81, $M_E{}_P{}_P = 0.09$ , $M_G{}_U{}_P = 0.25$ ). This indicates much lower variance in ES data in the EPP. There were also significant differences on all measures derived from the SART directly (RT, accuracy) albeit in a lower magnitude (see Table 2 ).

Factorial structure and reliability of the MAAS

We first checked the correlation matrices of the individual items on the questionnaire and the total score, separately for each of the two samples. In the GUP sample, item 6 had low item-to-total correlation (r $=$ 0.05) and correlations below r $=$ 0.2 with most other items. For that reason, we excluded item 6 from further analyses for the GUP. Thus, our total MAAS score for the EPP contained all 15 initial items, while the score of the GUP contained only 14 items.

We then conducted an exploratory factor analysis (EFA) for the MAAS responses for each of the two samples (factor loadings for one-factor EFAs are presented in Table 3 ). Figure 1 depicts scree plots for the EPP and GUP; these plots suggest that a single latent factor drives responses in the MAAS. Further EFAs also revealed that two-factor models only explain little additional variance (EPP: 3% and GUP: 5%), in comparison to that explained by one-factor models (EPP: 63% and GUP: 36%). However, the Kaiser rule (selecting the factors with an eigenvalue above 1; indicated by the dotted line in the scree plots) is also in accordance with a two-factor solution in our GUP.

The model fit statistics from confirmatory factor analyses (CFA) were estimated using the Comparative Fit Index (CFI), the Tucker Lewis Index (TLI), and the Root mean square error approximation (RMSEA). We compared the values against common standards for an acceptable fit (CFI/TLI > 0.9, RMSEA < 0.06) 52 . For one-factor models, the fits are acceptably high in the EPP (CFI $=$ 0.954, TLI $=$ 0.946). The fits were poorer, however, for the GUP (CFI $=$ 0.858, TLI $=$ 0.832). The RMSEA, which is an absolute fit statistic, indicates a poor approximate fit for both models, in the EPP (RMSEA $=$ 0.08) and GUP (RMSEA $=$ 0.096). However, the use of a fixed threshold for the RMSEA is questionable 53 , 54 . The full fit statistics of these two models and of an alternative two-factor model for the GUP can be found in the supplementary materials at https://osf.io/8kg6z . Together, EFA and CFA are mostly consistent with the notion of one single factor driving responses to the MAAS, even though some fit statistics for the CFA were below the threshold for an acceptable fit.

Reliabilities of the MAAS score (mean of individual items) were overall high. For the full MAAS the standardized Cronbach’s $\alpha$ was 0.88 in the GUP sample and 0.96 in the EPP. We created and then investigated shorter versions of the questionnaire consisting of the three or five items with the highest loadings in the EFAs. In the EPP these items were 7, 8, 10, 1, 11, and in the GUP items 14, 8, 9, 10, 7, in order of decreasing loading (see also Table 3 ). We refer to these shortened scales as the MAAS-5 and MAAS-3. The Cronbach’s $\alpha$ s of the scales are given in Table 4 and further descriptives of the scores are available in the supplementary materials (Table S7 ). Correlations between short and full MAAS scores were reasonably high (between r = 0.79 and r = 0.97, see full correlation matrices in the supplementary materials (Figs. S9 and S10 ).

Scree plot for MAAS for EPP and GUP samples. This figure was created using R (v. 4.02) 55 with package ‘ggplot2’ (v. 3.3.5) 56 .

Reliability of MW measures taken from the SART and ES

Estimates of reliability of the measures derived from the SART and ES probes are presented in Table 4 . They are split-half reliabilities derived using a permutation-based approach with 5000 random splits 40 , 57 . For further descriptives of the measures, see Table S7 in the supplementary materials. From the SART, we report these measures: accuracy, the mean (M) and standard deviation (SD) of RTs during all trials and also in only those trials preceding the ES probes within a 10-s time window, a measure used in MW neuroimaging studies 27 . SART values are reported separately for correct Go trials and incorrect Nogo trials. From ES probes, we report the proportion of all ES probes in which participants answered that they were off-task (Attention Off) and the proportion of meta-awareness probes in which participants answered that they were unaware that their attention was off task (Meta-Awareness Off). The sample sizes for the meta-awareness probes were smaller, because they exclude participants who reported that they were always on task. Split-half reliabilities for measures from Go trials in the SART and for ES probes are generally high. Reliabilities for Nogo trials were markedly lower, and were further reduced when restricting the analyses to the 10-s time windows immediately preceding ES probes. It is noteworthy that the sample sizes varied for these different measures due to the structure of the data and restrictions for the split-half calculations: Each participant needed at least four valid data points for the split-half procedure, as each split required two data points to calculate a mean or standard deviation. Furthermore, only 10.6% of all trials were Nogo trials and participants only reacted to 15.2% of Nogo trials, making Nogo trials with participant reaction somewhat scarce.

Estimates of association between the MAAS, SART, and ES

In a next step, we assessed the hypothesized negative association of MW with mindfulness. To this aim, we correlated measures derived from the SART and ES with the MAAS (Fig. 2 ). For the link between the direct measure of MW and mindfulness, we found ES probes (Attention Off) were moderately negatively associated with the MAAS in GUP ( $\hbox {r} = -.29$ , $p< 0.001$ ) but not in EPP (r $=$ 0.04, $p > 0.1$ ). Between indirect measures of MW and mindfulness, there was no indication for an association between the SART and the MAAS in GUP. In EPP, however, there were small correlations between MAAS total score and SD of RTs in the Go trials during the 10 s window before ES probes ( $\hbox {r} = -.23$ , $p < 0.05$ ), between MAAS total score and accuracy in all Nogo trials ( $\hbox {r} = .13$ , $p < 0.05$ ), and a medium association between MAAS total score and accuracy of Nogo trials in the 10 s window before ES probes ( $\hbox {r} = -.43$ , $p < 0.01$ ). The pattern is mostly consistent with the idea of a negative association of MW and mindfulness. There was no association between meta-awareness probes and MAAS scores in both samples. All pairwise correlations for both samples are available in Tables S1 and S2 in the supplementary materials at https://osf.io/8kg6z .

To check whether these correlations might have been heavily influenced by outliers or non-normally distributed data, we additionally bootstrapped the correlation coefficients and 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for these pairwise correlations (1000 iterations, 100 random participants sampled in each). In addition, we compared the Pearson product-moment correlations to Spearman rank correlations. These analyses showed a similar pattern of results from the Pearson correlations reported above in the GUP, but in the EPP the three reported associations with ES probes were not significant in the Spearman correlations. This further indicates the different answer patterns in self-reported MW between our two samples. The detailed results of these additional versions of the correlations are available in Tables S3 – S6 in the supplementary materials.

Pairwise Pearson correlations for MAAS, SART, and ES measures. Correlation coefficients are reported for whole sample (‘Corr’), and for EPP and GUP samples separately. Individual plots below the diagonal are scatter plots with regression lines for the two variables intersecting at this cell, those on the diagonal show density distribution plots for the two samples. Significance markers: . $=$ $p< 0.1$ , * $p< 0.05$ , ** $p< 0.01$ , *** $p< 0.001$ . This figure was created using R (v. 4.02) 55 with packages ‘ggplot2’ (v. 3.3.5) 56 and ‘GGally’ (v. 2.1.2) 58 .

This study entailed between-subject manipulations hypothesized to affect MW that are out of the scope of the current work. Briefly, we investigated whether exposing participants to auditory stimuli (5 Hz monaural or binaural auditory beats, silence, 440 Hz sine tone) could reduce their propensity to MW. Since such a finding has been reported earlier, in particular for participants exhibiting high proportions of MW 24 , we experimentally manipulated the occurrence of MW in three different ways. First, we varied the inter-stimulus-interval (1 vs. 2 s). Second, we implemented the stimuli in the SART predictably or unpredictably. Third, a creative problem-solving task was executed for a second time after the SART, and participants were either informed before the SART about the second execution or they were not informed.

These between-subject manipulations may have affected our estimates of associations between MW and mindfulness. To investigate this possibility, we first calculated ANOVAs with the experiment’s main manipulations (and all pairwise interactions) as predictors and measures from SART and ES as outcome variables. We then added the MAAS score as covariate to these, to create a set of comparable ANCOVAs. To evaluate whether our associations were affected by the experimental manipulations, we then checked two things. First, we compared the effect sizes ( $\eta ^2$ ) of the total MAAS score in these ANCOVAs with the coefficient of determination ( $r^2$ ) between the MAAS score and SART and ES measures. Second, we calculated model comparisons between the ANOVAs and ANCOVAs using likelihood-ratio tests (Table 5 ).

The effect sizes were for most combinations very similar in the correlations and the ANCOVAs. In all but one case, adding the MAAS score as covariate did not significantly improve the model fit. Only in the ES MW variable in GUP did adding the MAAS score as covariate significantly improve the model fit. There the estimate of association between ES MW and the MAAS score slightly increased when accounting for experimental manipulations. This result provides confirmatory evidence that MAAS and ES MW are weakly negatively associated in the GUP sample.

We examined the psychometrics of MW, meta-awareness of MW, and trait mindfulness, as well as the associations between these constructs. Overall, we found reasonably good psychometrics of all measures, and evidence that MW and trait mindfulness are indeed moderately negatively correlated. This association was not moderated by meta-awareness of MW. Neither the psychometrics nor moderating effects of meta-awareness can therefore readily explain that associations between MW and mindfulness are of a rather low magnitude.

In keeping with previous studies, we found overall good psychometric properties and evidence mostly consistent with a single-factor structure for the MAAS questionnaire. Our estimates of reliability of the MAAS were slightly higher than those reported in earlier studies, in both the EPP and GUP. For the English MAAS, the original publication reported internal consistencies in the range of [0.8, 0.87] 31 , and a further study reported 0.89 48 , but this value was 0.96 in our EPP. For the German MAAS, a Cronbach’s $\alpha$ of 0.83 was reported in the initial publication on the psychometric properties of the questionnaire 49 , while the value in our GUP was 0.88. Very high internal consistencies might indicate redundancy in a questionnaire, suggesting some items are superfluous and can be removed, which would lead to a more efficient assessment 59 . Results on the proposed shorter versions of the MAAS (MAAS-5 and MAAS-3) outlined in this study support this notion and may provide researchers with tools to optimize data collection.

One peculiarity we observed in the MAAS data for the GUP was item 6 ( “I forget a person’s name almost as soon as I’ve been told it for the first time.” 31 ), which correlated very poorly with all other items and the total score. Interestingly, the authors of the German MAAS also observed complications with this item but decided to include it to ensure international comparability 49 . Specifically, they found an item-to-total correlation of r $=$ 0.18 for item 6 while the next-lowest correlation was for item 1 (r $=$ 0.26) and those for all other items ranged from 0.33 to 0.65 We did not observe, however, such a low item-to-total correlation of item 6 in EPP. Nevertheless, we assume that cultural differences or mere issues related to translation cannot account for low item-to-total correlation for this item, as it was also observed in a study with English-speaking participants from New Zealand 50 . Moreover, item 6 was also one of the most poorly correlated items in the original English article detailing the MAAS 31 . We suggest item 6 may only occasionally be problematic as its meaning is ambiguous, and can be understood in two different ways. First, it could—probably as intended by the authors of the scale—measure attention usually directed to a person introducing themselves, or it can be understood as asking for self-report on one’s long-term memory abilities, which is arguably an altogether different trait than mindfulness.

While reliability is routinely reported for questionnaires such as the MAAS, they are less common for cognitive behavioral measures, e.g. for the MW measures derived from the SART and ES 40 . Still, earlier studies generally reported high reliabilities also for the SART: e.g. between 0.83 and 0.89 for overall accuracy in the SART 42 , 44 , between 0.92 and 0.98 for SDs of RT 44 , 45 , and even as high as 0.94 to 0.98 for the accuracy of Nogo trials 41 (see Table 1 ). Some of these studies, however, used a shorter stimulus-onset asynchrony (SOA) and much smaller sample sizes (13 42 and 12 41 participants). Also, earlier studies reporting SART reliabilities were usually laboratory studies with more controlled environments. These factors might have led to even higher reliabilty estimates for measures derived from Nogo trials. Our study adds further reasonably high reliabilities with alphas ranging from 0.84 to 0.99, on measures derived from the Go trials of the SART. In contrast to previous studies, reliability estimates for measures derived from Nogo trials were markedly lower (between 0.24 and 0.71) in our samples. These were probably low in our study due to only a small fraction of the SART trials that can be used to derive these measures as we increased the SOA from the original version in order to foster MW. Overall reliabilities are further reduced when restricting the analyses to a short time window preceding ES probes. Filtering the usable trials to a specific time window seems predominately appropriate for neuroimaging studies looking to isolate brain activity patterns of MW, which is where this analysis strategy originated 27 . Researchers focusing on Nogo trials and segmenting the data accordingly, should therefore take care to ensure that the number of trials analyzed remains reasonably large, and bear in mind that reliability of measures derived with these strategies is likely limited. Our reliability estimates for the ES MW probes during the SART (0.91 in GUP and 0.89 in EPP) were within the range of what earlier studies reported (e.g., 0.89 43 and 0.93 45 ). Together with the reliability estimates of the MAAS, our study demonstrates that high reliabilities of the MAAS, SART, and ES for MW can also be obtained in an online study setting.

Our results also stress notions of caution related to recruiting participants via crowdsourcing platforms such as—as in our case—Amazon Mechanical Turk (AMT, mturk.com). We noticed that the two samples behaved differently in the SART and ES, in that AMT participants (the EPP) were less likely to respond that their attention had been ‘off task’ but at the same time showed lower accuracy rates and slower, more varied RTs during the SART. This is likely to have also affected the estimate of association between self-reports of MW in ES probes and the MAAS score. A significant correlation was found in GUP, but not in EPP. The absence of a significant correlation could be due to lower variance in the ES probes of EPP versus GUP. We suggest the different patterns of results relating to the ES probes is not simply due to cultural or language differences, but rather due to differences in motivation to participate. Requesters at AMT are allowed to withhold payment if they are not satisfied with the performance of the participant. It thus seems reasonable to assume that some participants recruited through AMT reported being on task even when they were not. Our data underlies arguments made earlier that caution is warranted when recruiting via AMT and similar platforms, especially when using measures that are susceptible to the issues discussed above 60 , 61 . It might help to explicitly ensure participants that they will experience no disadvantages when they report being off task.

Our results support the hypothesis of a negative link between trait mindfulness and MW. Associations, however, were scattered over different measures and differed between our two samples: There was a moderate correlation of the MAAS with the self-report measure of MW (ES probes during the SART) in one of our samples (GUP) and with SART SDs of RTs and SART accuracy in the SART in the other sample (EPP). Low and absent associations between MW and mindfulness cannot be explained by low reliabilities of the measures we used, as reliabilities were generally satisfyingly high, with the exception of measures derived from SART Nogo trials. With that in mind, the associations based on measures with high realiabilities are only two: that between MAAS total score and ES MW in the GUP, and between MAAS total score and SDs of RTs in SART Go trials during the 10 s window before ES probes in the EPP. One potential explanation for finding the clear association between MAAS and ES MW only in the GUP might be a lack of variance in the EPP data as mentioned above. The lack of variance was due to a large proportion of participants who answered that they were rarely or never ‘off task’ during the experiment.

Despite good psychometrics of our measures, the link between trait mindfulness and MW was only moderate. A further explanation for rather low associations could be that meta-awareness of MW moderates the hypothesized associations. Our finding that meta-awareness of MW is not linked to mindfulness goes against such a hypothesis and some empirical evidence 7 , 23 . However, our results are in accordance with more recent papers that also do not find a moderating effect of meta-awareness on the association between MW and mindfulness 4 , 5 . Nayda et al. 5 reported negative associations between both, the propensity to ‘tune out’ (meta-aware MW) with mindfulness, and the propensity to ‘zone out’ (meta-unaware MW). An earlier publication by Deng et al. 4 found insignificant correlations between trait MW and both ‘zone out’ and ‘tune out’ propensities. It seems noteworthy that both correlations of the Deng et al. 4 study are in the same range and direction as in Nayda et al. 5 but do not reach statistical significance likely due to the low sample size (N $=$ 23). A potential caveat here is that these rates are calculated using the total of MW probes, rather than the total of meta-awareness probes only. These estimates are therefore biased in that the sum of the ‘tune out’ and ‘zone out’ rates is perfectly inverse proportional to the ‘on-task’ rate. In our analyses, we calculated the meta-awareness rate as proportion of the total of meta-awareness probes instead of the total of MW probes. We found no significant correlation between meta-awareness of MW and mindfulness. Thus, further research seems needed to isolate a potentially moderating effect of meta-awareness on the correlation between MW and mindfulness.

A further reason for low associations between MW and mindfulness could result from the difference in the trait versus transient nature of the constructs. Mindfulness is conceived and measured as a general personality trait. However, MW is a much more transient and fluctuating phenomenon during an ongoing and often boring task. Moreover, boredom itself may explain the low associations between MW and mindfulness. In MW research, the SART is often chosen as an ongoing task, because it is boring and therefore is thought to facilitate MW. The notion that boredom is an enabling factor for MW is supported by two findings. First, boredom has been shown to correlate with attentional lapses as measured with the SART 62 . Second, positive correlations between boredom and MW have been recently reported 63 . In contrast, when participants respond to the mindfulness questions of the MAAS, it is unclear to what extent participants consider boring ongoing tasks (e.g., “I rush through activities without being really attentive to them.” see Table 3 for the complete list of items of the MAAS). Therefore, while boredom seems a relevant aspect of MW when measured with the SART, this is not assessed with the MAAS. Together, this emphasizes the necessity of investigating the role of boredom in the relation between MW and mindfulness in future studies.

One may argue that a further reason for low associations between MW and trait mindfulness could be that the on-task state is more heterogeneous than previously thought. Heterogeneous on-task states were identified by assessing ongoing thought with multidimensional experience sampling (MDES), i.e., extending ES with several questions inquiring about the thoughts’ content and nature 64 . Principal component analysis (PCA) of MDES data revealed several components taxing into the on-task state, which were associated with distinct neural correlates 65 , 59 , 60 , 68 . One component was related to self-focused off-task thoughts while another component indicated detailed task focus. This task-focused component was common in cognitively demanding tasks like tasks measuring working memory, task switching, and gambling. However, it was less observed in low-demand tasks like the SART, where self-focused off-task thoughts prevail 64 . Together, these studies suggest that being more mindful might be linked to how people engage with tasks, perhaps by doing so in a more focused way. The possibility of multiple on-task states may therefore, contribute to the relatively low estimate of the association between mindfulness and ongoing thought.

Finally, low associations between MW and mindfulness could be due to insufficient validity, rather than reliability of the measures we used. While our current study focuses on reliability others have focused on issues related to validity, especially concerning the questionnaires to measure mindfulness 69 . On the one hand, the MAAS in particular has been shown to correlate reasonably well with other questionnaires measuring mindfulness such as the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) 70 . Further evidence for converging validity with, e.g., positive affect or attention, as well as evidence for discriminant validity, e.g., with anxiety and rumination, has been found in studies reporting correlations with MAAS scores 31 , 32 . On the other hand, questionnaires rely on introspective capabilities and may be subject to bias. A recent study by Isbel et al. 70 questioned especially the discriminant validity of the MAAS and the FFMQ as these measures increased following both a mindfulness training intervention and a control training intervention not aimed at mindfulness. Rather, objective accuracy of breath counting has been found to respond selectively to the mindfulness training intervention 70 . A potential reason why the breath counting task responded selectively to the mindfulness training is that mindfulness training itself often consists of exercises to guide one’s attention specifically on the breath. It is hence a rather near transfer from mindfulness training to an increase in accuracy in breath counting. Nevertheless, more research exploring the practical validity of mindfulness measures is required.

Recent methodological developments in MW research highlight limitations in our findings and offer advice for future research. Contemporary studies of ongoing thought that utilized MDES show that different tasks used in MW research elicit several distinct thought patterns to varying degrees 64 , 67 . Our study is consequently limited by the fact that we only used the SART to investigate the association between individual variation in mindfulness and MW instead of several tasks. The SART also has the limitation that it does not lead to much detailed task focus and tends to stimulate self-focused MW 64 . Due to that, it is unclear whether our findings generalize to other tasks or whether they are specific to the SART and thus to those types of ongoing thoughts more likely to be evoked by the SART like self-focused MW.

Besides the heterogeneity of ongoing thoughts, the relationship between MW and mindfulness is likely modulated by various other factors. A recent study has highlighted MW as a complex phenomenon that warrants a multi-faceted approach that includes a) dispositional traits, like conscientiousness, agreeableness, or mindfulness, b) contextual factors, like motivation or alertness, and c) cognitive abilities, like working memory capacity 71 . If the relationship between MW and mindfulness is embedded within such a multi-faceted approach, the association between these two factors might be diluted by other potential confounding factors that were not accounted for. In this regard, future research will benefit from assessing MW and mindfulness with a broad set of tools including MDES and multiple tasks with variable demands that elicit different patterns of ongoing thoughts.

Participants

A total of 715 participants performed or started our online experiment between October 2019 and January 2021. We excluded participants from the data analysis for these reasons and in this order: Repeated participation (n $=$ 11), incomplete data due to technical issues (n $=$ 1), incomplete or delayed participation in the experiment (time in experiment < 23 min or > 120 min [n $=$ 59]), low number of correct SART trials (proportion of correct Go trials < 2/3 [n $=$ 51], or proportion of correct Nogo trials < 1/2 [n $=$ 22]), and outliers who took a long time to answer the ES probes (n $=$ 30). For this last point we established a cutoff based on the interquartile range (IQR) due to the highly skewed distribution of these values. Cutoff was the 75th percentile plus three times the IQR. We based our data analyses on a total sample of 541, separated into 313 GUP (aged between 16 and 85, M $=$ 38.78, SD $=$ 12.95) and 228 EPP (aged between 19 and 68, M $=$ 34.27, SD $=$ 11.39). Further demographic characteristics are given in Table 6 .

We recruited participants for two different language versions of the experiment through various routes. The GUP (n $=$ 313) consists of: (a) 97 participants recruited by the students of two classes in the autumn 2019 and spring 2020 semesters at UniDistance Suisse; (b) 200 students and members of the public interested in participating in experimental research from our institute’s pool of research participants; and (c) 16 participants who followed links in an information email to university employees and on different websites. The EPP (n − 228) contains: (a) 217 participants recruited through AMT, (b) 10 who were PhD students at the Department of Epileptology at the University of Bonn, and (c) 1 who followed a link from an external website.

Those recruited through AMT were paid USD 3.50 when they had completed the whole experiment. Students in the Bachelor’s program in Psychology at the UniDistance Suisse received course credits for their participation. Other participants received no compensation. All participants gave informed consent by reading information provided online and then checking off tick boxes in an online form before they proceeded to the experiment. The study was carried out following all the relevant guidelines and regulations. The study and its compliance with relevant guidelines and regulations was approved by the ethical review committee of the Faculty of Psychology at UniDistance Suisse ( https://distanceuniversity.ch/research/ethics-commission/ ). In particular, all procedures are in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki.

The data reported here was collected in a study also investigating the effects of experimental manipulations on MW. Participants performed the SART with intermittent ES probes to directly obtain self-reports of episodes of MW. These experimental manipulations are outside the scope of the current work as they focus on potential effects of auditory beat stimulation on MW 24 , 72 and will be reported elsewhere. Briefly, experimental manipulations were performed in a $4\times 2\times 2\times 2$ between-subjects design and included the independent variables Auditory Beat Stimulation (5 Hz binaural, 5 Hz monaural; 440 Hz pure tone; no sound), SART ISI (1 or 2 s), Predictability of the Number Sequence in the SART (random or ascending), and Expectancy of an ensuing creativity task (expected or unexpected). Dependent variables are RTs and Accuracy during the SART and ES MW probes. It was for the purpose of this study, that we collected data using the MAAS.

Instruments

To assess trait mindfulness we applied the MAAS, a 15-item questionnaire that determines attention to the present in everyday experiences 31 . For the German version of the experiment, we used the validated German translation available from the Leibniz Institute for Psychology Information (ZPID) 73 .

To measure MW indirectly through lapses in sustained attention in a deliberately monotonous task, we used the SART 21 . The SART is a Go/No-go task that uses digits as stimuli which are presented individually on screen with a fixation cross shown between stimuli. Participants are asked to react to all digits (Go trials) except for the number 7 (Nogo trials). We adapted the original SART with the intention to make it more monotonous, in order to elicit more MW. Specifically, we displayed each stimulus longer (2 s instead of 250 ms), had a longer ISI (1 or 2 s instead of 900 ms), and used a fixed font size (instead of randomly varying font sizes) to present our stimuli 21 .

We assessed self-reported MW using ES probes during the SART. In intervals between 25 and 35 s, participants were asked: “Immediately before this question appeared, was your attention focused ON the task or OFF task?” with a dichotomous forced-choice answer. When “OFF task” was selected, a second question appeared: “Were you aware that your attention was OFF task?” with a dichotomous forced choice answer again (yes or no). There was no time limit to answer these probes.

To further increase MW by adding a cognitive distraction during the SART and to assess particpants’ creativity, we implemented a short task for divergent thinking based on the alternative/unusual uses concept originally introduced by Guilford 74 . In this unusual uses task (UUT), participants were given 20 s to find alternative uses for a brick, with the original use described as “building houses”. Participants entered their answer in a large text field and were asked to enter one answer per line.

We implemented the MAAS and SART with ES as an online experiment using the JavaScript-based online experiment builder “lab.js” ( https://lab.js.org 75 . Participants were required to wear headphones during the experiment. We included a headphone test before the SART to ensure participants had correctly placed the headphones and could listen to the stimulation. Runnable files and code for both language versions of the experiment can be found in the supplementary materials at https://osf.io/8kg6z .

The online experiment started with information about the experiment, data processing, and informed consent request. This was followed by a short demographic questionnaire, the MAAS, the headphone test, the UUT, and 20 min of the SART. After the SART, a summary page informed the participants about their performance and a debriefing page gave further background information about the study.

Data processing, analysis and creation of figures and tables were done in R (v 4.0.2) 55 , using the following packages in addition to base R: ‘tidyverse’ 76 for various data wrangling and processing tasks and for data visualizations via ‘ggplot2’ 56 , ‘GGally’ 58 for data visualizations, ‘e1071’ 77 for kurtosis and skewness calculations, ‘lubridate’ 78 for handling of date and time data, ‘lavaan’ 79 for confirmatory factor analyses, ‘stargazer’ 80 to create and export LaTeX tables, ‘splithalf’ 57 for permutation-based split-half calculatio ns.

Data availability

The datasets generated and analysed for the current study are available in the Open Science Framework (OSF) repository, https://osf.io/wg9q5 . Tables, figures, and other supplementary materials specifically for this publication are available in a different repository at OSF, https://osf.io/8kg6z .

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all students of the following two classes at the UniDistance Suisse, who recruited participants for the experiment: “Methoden III: Experimentelle Übungen” during the fall semester 2019, “Wissenschaftliches Arbeiten” during the spring semester 2020.

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Angelo Belardi, Alodie Rey-Mermet, Nicolas Rothen & Thomas P. Reber

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Using the CRediT contributor roles taxonomy (casrai.org/credit/). A.B.: Conceptualization, Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Validation, Visualization, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing. L.C.: Conceptualization, Resources, Writing—review & editing. A.R-M.: Conceptualization, Writing—review & editing. F.M.: Resources, Writing—review & editing. N.R.: Resources, Writing—review & editing. J.F.: Conceptualization, Writing—review & editing. T.P.R.: Conceptualization, Resources, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Software, Validation, Supervision, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

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Greater Good Science Center • Magazine • In Action • In Education

Does Mind-Wandering Make You Unhappy?

What are the major causes of human happiness?

It’s an important question but one that science has yet to fully answer. We’ve learned a lot about the demographics of happiness and how it’s affected by conditions like income, education, gender, and marriage. But the scientific results are surprising: Factors like these don’t seem to have particularly strong effects. Yes, people are generally happier if they make more money rather than less, or are married instead of single, but the differences are quite modest.

Although our goals in life often revolve around these sorts of milestones, my research is driven by the idea that happiness may have more to do with the contents of our moment-to-moment experiences than with the major conditions of our lives. It certainly seems that fleeting aspects of our everyday lives—such as what we’re doing, who we’re with, and what we’re thinking about—have a big influence on our happiness, and yet these are the very factors that have been most difficult for scientists to study.

A few years ago, I came up with a way to study people’s moment-to-moment happiness in daily life on a massive scale, all over the world, something we’d never been able to do before. This took the form of trackyourhappiness.org, which uses iPhones to monitor people’s happiness in real time.

My results suggest that happiness is indeed highly sensitive to the contents of our moment-to-moment experience. And one of the most powerful predictors of happiness is something we often do without even realizing it: mind-wandering.

Be here now

As human beings, we possess a unique and powerful cognitive ability to focus our attention on something other than what is happening in the here and now. A person could be sitting in his office working on his computer, and yet he could be thinking about something else entirely: the vacation he had last month, which sandwich he’s going to buy for lunch, or worrying that he’s going bald.

This ability to focus our attention on something other than the present is really amazing. It allows us to learn and plan and reason in ways that no other species of animal can. And yet it’s not clear what the relationship is between our use of this ability and our happiness.

You’ve probably heard people suggest that you should stay focused on the present. “Be here now,” as Ram Dass advised back in 1971. Maybe, to be happy, we need to stay completely immersed and focused on our experience in the moment. Maybe this is good advice; maybe mind-wandering is a bad thing.

On the other hand, when our minds wander, they’re unconstrained. We can’t change the physical reality in front of us, but we can go anywhere in our minds. Since we know people want to be happy, maybe when our minds wander we tend to go to someplace happier than the reality that we leave behind. It would make a lot of sense. In other words, maybe the pleasures of the mind allow us to increase our happiness by mind-wandering.

Since I’m a scientist, I wanted to try to resolve this debate with some data. I collected this data using trackyourhappiness.org.

How does it work? Basically, I send people signals at random times throughout the day, and then I ask them questions about their experience at the instant just before the signal. The idea is that if we can watch how people’s happiness goes up and down over the course of the day, and try to understand how things like what people are doing, who they’re with, what they’re thinking about, and all the other factors that describe our experiences relate to those ups and downs in happiness, we might eventually be able to discover some of the major causes of human happiness.

This essay is based a 2011 TED talk by Matt Killingsworth.

In the results I’m going to describe, I will focus on people’s responses to three questions. The first was a happiness question: How do you feel? on a scale ranging from very bad to very good. Second, an activity question: What are you doing? on a list of 22 different activities including things like eating and working and watching TV. And finally a mind-wandering question: Are you thinking about something other than what you’re currently doing? People could say no (in other words, they are focused only on their current activity) or yes (they are thinking about something else). We also asked if the topic of those thoughts is pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant. Any of those yes responses are what we called mind-wandering.

We’ve been fortunate with this project to collect a lot of data, a lot more data of this kind than has ever been collected before, over 650,000 real-time reports from over 15,000 people. And it’s not just a lot of people, it’s a really diverse group, people from a wide range of ages, from 18 to late 80s, a wide range of incomes, education levels, marital statuses, and so on. They collectively represent every one of 86 occupational categories and hail from over 80 countries.

Wandering toward unhappiness

So what did we find?

First of all, people’s minds wander a lot. Forty-seven percent of the time, people are thinking about something other than what they’re currently doing. Consider that statistic next time you’re sitting in a meeting or driving down the street.

How does that rate depend on what people are doing? When we looked across 22 activities, we found a range—from a high of 65 percent when people are taking a shower or brushing their teeth, to 50 percent when they’re working, to 40 percent when they’re exercising. This went all the way down to sex, when 10 percent of the time people’s minds are wandering. In every activity other than sex, however, people were mind-wandering at least 30 percent of the time, which I think suggests that mind-wandering isn’t just frequent, it’s ubiquitous. It pervades everything that we do.

How does mind-wandering relate to happiness? We found that people are substantially less happy when their minds are wandering than when they’re not, which is unfortunate considering we do it so often. Moreover, the size of this effect is large—how often a person’s mind wanders, and what they think about when it does, is far more predictive of happiness than how much money they make, for example.

Now you might look at this result and say, “Ok, on average people are less happy when they’re mind-wandering, but surely when their minds are straying away from something that wasn’t very enjoyable to begin with, at least then mind-wandering will be beneficial for happiness.”

As it turns out, people are less happy when they’re mind-wandering no matter what they’re doing. For example, people don’t really like commuting to work very much; it’s one of their least enjoyable activities. Yet people are substantially happier when they’re focused only on their commute than when their mind is wandering off to something else. This pattern holds for every single activity we measured, including the least enjoyable. It’s amazing.

But does mind-wandering actually cause unhappiness, or is it the other way around? It could be the case that when people are unhappy, their minds wander. Maybe that’s what’s driving these results.

We’re lucky in this data in that we have many responses from each person, and so we can look and see, does mind-wandering tend to precede unhappiness, or does unhappiness tend to precede mind-wandering? This gives us some insight into the causal direction.

As it turns out, there is a strong relationship between mind-wandering now and being unhappy a short time later, consistent with the idea that mind-wandering is causing people to be unhappy. In contrast, there’s no relationship between being unhappy now and mind-wandering a short time later. Mind-wandering precedes unhappiness but unhappiness does not precede mind-wandering. In other words, mind-wandering seems likely to be a cause, and not merely a consequence, of unhappiness.

How could this be happening? I think a big part of the reason is that when our minds wander, we often think about unpleasant things: our worries, our anxieties, our regrets. These negative thoughts turn out to have a gigantic relationship to (un)happiness. Yet even when people are thinking about something they describe as neutral, they’re still considerably less happy than when they’re not mind-wandering. In fact, even when they’re thinking about something they describe as pleasant, they’re still slightly less happy than when they aren’t mind-wandering at all.

The lesson here isn’t that we should stop mind-wandering entirely—after all, our capacity to revisit the past and imagine the future is immensely useful, and some degree of mind-wandering is probably unavoidable. But these results do suggest that mind-wandering less often could substantially improve the quality of our lives. If we learn to fully engage in the present , we may be able to cope more effectively with the bad moments and draw even more enjoyment from the good ones.

About the Author

Matt Killingsworth

Matt Killingsworth, Ph.D., is a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Scholar. He studies the nature and causes of human happiness, and is the creator of www.trackyourhappiness.org which uses smartphones to study happiness in real-time during everyday life. Recent research topics have included the relationship between happiness and the content of everyday experiences, the percentage of everyday experiences that are intrinsically valuable, and the degree of congruence between the causes of momentary happiness and of one's overall satisfaction with life. Matt earned his Ph.D. in psychology at Harvard University.

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Harvard Staff Writer

Those who learn its techniques often say they feel less stress, think clearer

Second of two parts

On a cold winter evening, six women and two men sat in silence in an office near Harvard Square, practicing mindfulness meditation.

Sitting upright, eyes closed, palms resting on their laps, feet flat on the floor, they listened as course instructor Suzanne Westbrook guided them to focus on the present by paying attention to their bodily sensations, thoughts, emotions, and especially their breath.

Suzanne Westbrook, a retired internal-medicine doctor, taught an eight-week program that focused on reducing stress.

Rose Lincoln/Harvard Staff Photographer

“Our mind wanders all the time, either reviewing the past or planning for the future,” said Westbrook, who before retiring last June was an internal-medicine doctor caring for Harvard students. “Mindfulness teaches you the skill of paying attention to the present by noticing when your mind wanders off. Come back to your breath. It’s a place where we can rest and settle our minds.”

The class she taught was part of an eight-week program aimed at reducing stress.

Studies say that eight in 10 Americans experience stress in their daily lives and have a hard time relaxing their bodies and calming their minds, which puts them at high risk of heart disease, stroke, and other illnesses. Of the myriad offerings aimed at fighting stress, from exercise to yoga to meditation, mindfulness meditation has become the hottest commodity in the wellness universe.

Modeled after the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program created in 1979 by Jon Kabat-Zinn to help counter stress, chronic pain, and other ailments, mindfulness courses these days can be found in venues ranging from schools to prisons to sports teams. Even the U.S. Army recently adopted it to “improve military resilience.”

Harvard offers several mindfulness and meditation classes, including a spring break retreat held in March for students through the Center for Wellness and Health Promotion . The Office of Work/Life offers programs to managers and staff, as well as weekly drop-in meditation sessions on campus, online guided meditation resources, and even a meditation phone line, 4-CALM (at 617.384.2256).

“We were tasked to find ways for the community to cope with stress. And at the same time, so much research was coming out on the benefits of mindfulness and meditation,” said Jeanne Mahon, director of the wellness center. “We keep offering mindfulness and meditation because of the feedback. People appreciate to have the chance for self-reflection and learn about new ways to be in relationships with themselves.”

More than 750 students have participated in mindfulness and meditation programs since 2012, said Mahon.

Part of mindfulness’ appeal lies in the fact that it’s secular. Buddhist monks have used mindfulness exercises as forms of meditation for more than 2,600 years, seeing them as one of the paths to enlightenment. But in the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program, mindfulness is stripped of religious undertones.

Mark Dennis (from left), Kelly Romirowsky, and Ayesha Hood practice meditation. Metta McGarvey (not pictured) teaches the practice of mindfulness, a workshop for educators inside the Gutman Conference Center.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer.

Mindfulness’ popularity has been bolstered by a growing body of research showing that it reduces stress and anxiety, improves attention and memory, and promotes self-regulation and empathy. A few years ago, a study by Sara Lazar , a neuroscientist and assistant professor of psychology at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and assistant researcher in psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital, was the first to document that mindfulness meditation can change the brain’s gray matter and brain regions linked with memory, the sense of self, and regulation of emotions. New research by Benjamin Shapero and Gaëlle Desbordes is exploring how mindfulness can help depression .

The pioneer of scientific research on meditation, Herbert Benson , extolled its benefits on the human body — reduced blood pressure, heart rate, and brain activity — as early as 1975. He helped demystify meditation by calling it the “relaxation response.” Benson is director emeritus of the Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Mind/Body Medicine Distinguished Professor of Medicine at HMS.

In the 1980s, mindfulness had yet to become a buzzword, recalls Paul Fulton, a clinical psychologist who has practiced Zen and insight meditation (vipassana) for more than 40 years. In the mid-1980s, when he was working on his doctoral dissertation on the nature of “self” among Buddhist monks, speaking of mindfulness in a medical context among scientists was “disreputable,” he recalled.

“Gradually because of the research, it became chic, no longer disreputable,” said Fulton, a lecturer in psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at HMS and co-founder of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy . “And now you can’t step a foot out of the house without being barraged by mindfulness.”

Melanie Denham, head coach of Harvard women’s rugby team, recently attended a mindfulness workshop, intrigued by the idea of incorporating the techniques into her players’ training regimen to help them cope with the pressures of “expectation and performance.”

Mindfulness meditation made easy

Settle in : Find a quiet space. Using a cushion or chair, sit up straight but not stiff; allow your head and shoulders to rest comfortably; place your hands on the tops of your legs with upper arms at your side.
Now breathe: Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax. Feel the fall and rise of your chest and the expansion and contraction of your belly. With each breath notice the coolness as it enters and the warmth as it exits. Don’t control the breath but follow its natural flow.
Stay focused: Thoughts will try to pull your attention away from the breath. Notice them, but don’t pass judgment. Gently return your focus to your breath. Some people count their breaths as a way to stay focused.
Take 10: A daily practice will provide the most benefits. It can be 10 minutes per day, however, 20 minutes twice a day is often recommended for maximum benefit.

“In and out of the classroom, these student-athletes are immersed in a highly competitive culture,” said Denham. “This is stressful. This kind of training can develop a more-skillful mind and a sense of focus and well-being that can help them better maintain control and awareness of their thoughts, emotions, and presence in the moment.”

The growing interest in the field is reflected in Harvard’s course catalog. This spring, Lazar is teaching “Cognitive Neuroscience of Meditation,” Ezer Vierba leads an expository freshmen writing course on “Buddhism, Mindfulness, and the Practical Mind,” and Metta McGarvey teaches “Mindfulness for Educators” at the Graduate School of Education .

Due to high demand, McGarvey, who holds a doctorate in human development and psychology, teaches a three-day workshop for educators. It offers tools to enhance their work and their focus through breathing practices and self-compassion exercises.

“A lot of them are working in really tough environments, with all kinds of pressures,” said McGarvey. “The rates of burnout in some of the more challenging environments are very high.”

Ayesha Hood, a police officer from Baltimore who is interested in running a day care center, attended McGarvey’s workshop last fall, and found it helpful. “As a police officer, I live in high stress, and as a public servant, I tend to neglect myself,” she said. “I want to calm myself and be conscious about it.”

Christine O’Shaughnessy, a former investment bank executive who lead workshops at Harvard, said, “All day we’re bombarded with social media, colleagues, work, children, etc. We don’t have time to spend it in quiet reflection. But if you practice it at least once a day, you’ll have a better day.”

To skeptics who still view mindfulness as hippie-dippy poppycock, O’Shaughnessy has four words: “Give it a try.” When she first signed up for a mindfulness workshop in 1999, she said she was skeptical too. But once she realized she was becoming calmer and less stressed, she converted. She eventually quit her job and became a mindfulness instructor. (She recently launched a free meditation app .)

“Doing mindfulness is like a fitness routine for your brain,” she said. “It keeps your brain healthy.”

Metta McGarvey teaches the practice of mindfulness, a workshop for educators inside the Gutman Conference Center.

Kris Snibbe/Harvard Staff Photographer

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Mindfulness practitioners admit the practice can offer challenges. It requires consistency because its effects can be better felt over time, and discipline to train the wandering mind to keep coming back to the present, without judgment. A 2014 study said that many people would rather apply electroshocks to themselves than be alone with their thoughts. Another study showed that most people find it hard to focus on the present and that the mind’s wandering can lead to stress and even suffering.

Despite the rising acceptance of mindfulness, many people still think the practice involves emptying their minds, taking mini-naps, or going into trances. Beginners often fall asleep, feel uncomfortable, struggle with difficult thoughts or emotions, and become bored or distracted. Adepts recommend practicing the process in a group with an instructor.

After the training session led by Westbrook, one participant said she couldn’t stop thinking about what was for dinner during the meditation practice; others nodded in agreement. Westbrook reassured her, saying that mindfulness is not about stopping thoughts or emotions, but instead about noticing them without judgment. Mindfulness builds resilience and awareness to help people learn how to ride life’s ups and downs and live happier and healthier lives, said Westbrook, who, after helping heal the bodies of thousands of patients in 36 years as a doctor, plans to devote her second career to caring for people’s spirits and souls, maybe as a chaplain.

“Mindfulness is not about being positive all the time or a bubblegum sort of happiness — la, la, la,” she said. “It’s about noticing what happens moment to moment, the easy and the difficult, and the painful and the joyful. It’s about building a muscle to be present and awake in your life.”

For more information about the Mindfulness & Meditation program at Harvard University, visit its website . For a list of spring courses for Harvard faculty and staff, visit the Mindfulness at Work Program website .

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The Wandering Mind vs. Mindfulness

Brigham and Women's Hospital

Neuroimaging Research has grappled with the concept of a “resting brain”. Researchers interested in Consciousness have grappled with localizing subjective states of awareness and the elusive “self”. It seems that contemplative science is bringing both concepts to the table given the profound interest in tracing neurophenomenological states associated with “the self” and intentional, meditative practices.

All functional neuroimaging research has focused on Blood-oxygenation-level-dependent ( BOLD ) changes in the whole brain associated with a particular active, goal-directed, cognitive or emotional function and which has shown to be statistically different from BOLD activity across the whole brain during a “passive” baseline state. The baseline state that most researchers use is typically a 5-6 min long period of passive “rest”. The instructions are typically, “Let your mind freely wander” and “try not to think of anything in particular”. These instructions sound benign and appear to be the perfect baseline state, but as it turns out, [surprise…surprise] a wandering mind is quite active. The mind in this baseline state has shown to have a tendency to wander towards self-reflection (in the past and into the future). Some researchers have called this type of wandering, “mental time travel”.

Recently, a growing body of research has investigated the nature of this resting, or “default” state, and has found that brain activation previously considered to be spontaneous noise actually reflects the operation of active and functionally connected neural networks. These patterns of activation has been termed the default mode network (DMN), have been shown to increase during passive states of rest, to diminish during tasks involving attention or goal-directed behavior, and tend to implicate brain areas associated with self-reflection, internal mentation, and narrative self-focus. In many forms of psychopathology, the DMN has been found to be more active during resting states and less likely to decrease in activation during active goal-directed tasks, suggesting a relationship between psychopathology, excessive self-reflection or rumination [about past events], and increased self-projection [into the future].

In a recent study[ Link ] by friend and colleague, Judson Brewer at Yale University, adept meditators trained in meditation techniques rooted mostly in Theravada (vipassana/insight) traditions actively meditated using multiple types of meditation practices (Concentration, Loving-Kindness, Choiceless Awareness ) while being imaged in the MRI. A “mind-wander” rest state was the baseline state in this case, and comparisons were made also between the adepts and a group of novices who had brief instructions how to perform each meditative practice.

As seen below, Experienced meditators demonstrate decreased DMN activation during meditation. Brain activation in meditators > controls is shown, collapsed across all meditations (relative to baseline). (A and B) BOLD activations were found to be greater in the left mPFC and PCC for adepts. Although, one should take note that the % change was very minimal (about .25 % at most). The mPFC and PCC are critical nodes of activation during typical mind wandering, self-reflection, and the core areas for the DMN.

Choiceless Awareness (green bars), Loving-Kindness (red), and Concentration (blue) meditations. Note that decreased activation in PCC in meditators is common across different meditation types. n = 12 per group.

What does this mean?

You may ask what this means and how it relates to mindfulness and mind-wandering. It suggests that adept meditators spend less time using the self-reflective network or “DMN” while meditating. This makes sense given the heavy reliance on concentration in these practices. But how about when adepts are simply “wandering” during passive rest? Are they like everyone else? Do they also reflect upon themselves in the past or into the future? This study did not quite capture the phenomenological differences between the groups, but it did find that the DMN had different functional connectivity patterns.

Using mPFC as a seed region for connectivity, they found increased connectivity with the fusiform gyrus, inferior temporal and parahippocampal gyri, and left posterior insula (among other regions) in meditators relative to controls during meditation. Using the PCC as a seed region, increased connectivity (compared with controls) was found with the dorsal ACC and DLPFC during all meditative states and baseline wandering, suggesting increased cognitive monitoring and working memory across both meditative and passive resting states. It would be helpful to know if there was a qualitative aspect of “wandering” that was about equal for meditators and controls.

Similarly, David Creswell and Lisa Kilpatrick demonstrated that 8-weeks of MBSR training showed increased functional connectivity of dmPFC (an anterior DMN region) with an auditory/salience neural network (especially with BA 22/39 (associated with auditory processing) and the dorsal ACC (involved in salience) . They suggest these results indicate greater positive coherence between self-referential, attention, and auditory sensory processing and may underlie greater attention and reflective awareness of auditory experience in MBSR trained subjects.

Again, the DMN is used here as a proxy for a “wandering mind”. Decreased activity in the cortical midline structures that make up this network reflects less self-reflection or narrative self-processing, and suggests more present-centered awareness, monitoring, and attention of interoceptive and exteroceptive stimuli in the environment and associated with the body. The reason I bring attention to this area of research is that contemplative neuroscientists will likely have to take these differences in the DMN between novices and adepts into consideration when scanning meditative states. In other words, a passive mind wandering state may be different between adepts and novices or naives. Thus, between groups comparisons should likely account for these differences and at the very least, quantify the qualitative aspects of mind wandering between groups.

ON THE OTHER HAND….

There is some evidence that mind wandering is adaptive. One study (for example) by Jonathan Schooler and colleagues demonstrates that increased mind wandering during a boring task increased creativity. Schooler has previously demonstrated a correlation between daydreaming and creativity—those who are more prone to mind-wandering tend to be better at generating new ideas.

See New Yorker write up [ Link ]

Here are some links to press related to these studies:

psychology today [ Link ]

Meditation May Help Brains Rewire, Protect Against Mental Illness – KABC (kabc.com)
Mind-wandering and mindfulness (psychologytoday.com)
Our Wandering Minds…. (joannewellington.wordpress.com)
MIND AND HEALTH Relax your mind and focus (tech.mit.edu)
Meditation leads to less mind wandering, more doing (mentalflowers.wordpress.com)

attention Choiceless Awareness david creswell default mode network Default network DMN jonathan schooler Judson Brewer meditation mind wandering mindfulness mindfulness-based stress reduction self reflection

on February 5, 2012

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Is a Wandering Mind an Unhappy Mind? The Affective Qualities of Creativity, Volition, and Resistance

First Online: 08 October 2022

Cite this chapter

Nicolás González 3 ,
Camila García-Huidobro 3 &
Pablo Fossa 3

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In recent years, research on mind wandering has increased. Much of this scientific evidence has shown the negative effects of mind wandering, such as everyday accidents, depression, obsessive compulsive disorder, concentration, and learning problems in educational processes. Although there is scientific evidence of the positive aspects of mind wandering, this is still scarce in literature. In this chapter, we propose the important role of mind wandering as an affective expression of consciousness, which extends to the processes of creativity, volition, and resistance as inter-functional connections of thought.

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González, N., García-Huidobro, C., Fossa, P. (2022). Is a Wandering Mind an Unhappy Mind? The Affective Qualities of Creativity, Volition, and Resistance. In: Dario, N., Tateo, L. (eds) New Perspectives on Mind-Wandering. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-06955-0_13

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The brain on silent: mind wandering, mindful awareness, and states of mental tranquility

David r. vago.

1 Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham & Women's Hospital and Department of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts

Fadel Zeidan

2 Department of Neurobiology and Anatomy, Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, North Carolina

Mind wandering and mindfulness are often described as divergent mental states with opposing effects on cognitive performance and mental health. Spontaneous mind wandering is typically associated with self-reflective states that contribute to negative processing of the past, worrying/fantasizing about the future, and disruption of primary task performance. On the other hand, mindful awareness is frequently described as a focus on present sensory input without cognitive elaboration or emotional reactivity, and is associated with improved task performance and decreased stress-related symptomology. Unfortunately, such distinctions fail to acknowledge similarities and interactions between the two states. Instead of an inverse relationship between mindfulness and mind wandering, a more nuanced characterization of mindfulness may involve skillful toggling back and forth between conceptual and nonconceptual processes and networks supporting each state, to meet the contextually specified demands of the situation. In this article, we present a theoretical analysis and plausible neurocognitive framework of the restful mind, in which we attempt to clarify potentially adaptive contributions of both mind wandering and mindful awareness through the lens of the extant neurocognitive literature on intrinsic network activity, meditation, and emerging descriptions of stillness and nonduality. A neurophenomenological approach to probing modality-specific forms of concentration and nonconceptual awareness is presented that may improve our understanding of the resting state. Implications for future research are discussed.

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless; Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is, But neither arrest nor movement. –T.S. Eliot a

Introduction

What are the phenomenological characteristics of a restful mind? With eyes closed, removed from external distraction, a state of wakeful relaxation may easily be cultivated. Yet, left to its musings, it is common for the mind to experience a relentless stream of evaluative thoughts, emotions, or feelings without much effort. “Monkey mind” is a metaphor for the mind's natural tendency to be restless— jumping from one thought or feeling to another, as a monkey swings from limb to limb. Given the heavy demand of modern life on cognitive load, managing the onslaught of ongoing sensory and mental events throughout daily life and improving efficiency of mental processing is of high concern. Tranquility and stillness of mind, as described in the Buddhist Nikāyas , b are believed to reflect a natural settling of thoughts and emotions, in which there is stability of attention, sensory clarity, and equanimity of affect and behavior. 1 This state is believed to develop through systematic mental training involving a combination of concentration, nonconceptual observation, and discernment. 2 – 4

Although the majority of research on brain function has focused on task-evoked activity, current research focusing on the task-unrelated resting mind–brain is beginning to reveal the critical importance of this largely ignored part of human life. Since the advent of neurophysiological recording, it has been determined that the brain is never truly resting. Hans Berger first observed that all states of wakefulness and sleep reveal a spectrum of mixed amplitudes and frequencies of electrical activity that does not cease. According to thought-sampling studies during mind wandering, 5 – 7 the content of the restless mind is often incredibly rich and self-relevant, characterized by spontaneous thoughts and emotions concerned with the past and hopes, fears, and fantasies about the future, often including interpersonal feelings, unfulfilled goals, unresolved challenges, and intrusive memories. With respect to cost and benefit, research on the “resting state” is demonstrating how task-unrelated or stimulus-independent thought (SIT) may adaptively organize brain function 8 and how the intrinsic neural activity supporting SIT affects brain metabolism and neuroplasticity. 8 – 11 Although there are certainly benefits to having access to the rich landscape of spontaneous thoughts for the purpose of creative incubation, 7 , 12 problem solving, 6 and goal setting, 13 an inability to focus attention in the face of irrelevant distraction by such thoughts can be problematic. Unfortunately, humans have been shown to experience this intrinsic undercurrent of spontaneous, self-generated thought during ongoing task demands as a form of interference, distraction, or rumination approximately 50% of each waking day. 5 , 14 SIT often interferes with the ability to remain externally vigilant, 15 , 16 remain focused or concentrate on the task at hand, 16 properly encode external information, 17 listen, 18 perform, 16 , 19 or even sleep. 20 In addition to the apparent inefficiency that SIT contributes to daily life, there is now a large literature linking a majority of self-generated thought to negatively valenced content and negative mood states, 21 , 22 future unhappiness, 5 and the maintenance of psychopathology, such as generalized anxiety disorder 23 – 25 or major depressive disorder. 26 , 27 Most recently, there has been interest in exploring how particular forms of mental training that include a state of mindful awareness allow individuals to change the relationship with the resting state and experience the stream of stimulus-independent mental content in an adaptive way. 28 – 30

Mindfulness and mind wandering are often described as two divergent mental states; 31 , 32 yet, both are frequently referenced in the context of mental rest. There is a subtle difference in both awareness and engagement with the flow of mental objects that may determine the adaptive or maladaptive nature by which the mental content influences one's current mood and future behavior ( Fig. 1 ). Currently, there is great interest in better understanding the neural mechanisms that support resting-state dynamics, states of mindful awareness, and their respective contributions to mood and cognition (see Refs. 31 and 32 ). In this article, we examine a more nuanced perspective on particular mental states that reflect “rest,” mental quiet, stimulus independence, and the neurobiological and physiological circuitry supporting the various flavors of what may constitute a “restful mind.” Occasionally, references are made to the historical Buddhist literature for the purpose of exploring an epistemology of mind as it relates to contemporary secular adaptations of the construct mindfulness.

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Variations in awareness during meditation and mind-wandering rest. Visual (V), auditory (A), and somatic (S) modalities of experience are depicted. Awareness in the present moment is depicted by the blue band around mental objects arising and passing through time. Width of the band represents the temporal focus of awareness. The more temporally extended awareness is in time, the more mental stickiness and disengagement delays are apparent. Wider bands refer to difficulty disengaging from mental or sensory objects, greater projection into past or future experience, and a resulting smaller aperture. FA meditation focuses on only one mental/physical object in experience (somatic object is depicted here). All modalities of experience enter awareness in OM meditation and mind wandering (MW). Variations in qualities of object orientation (engagement/disengagement), clarity, and aperture in experience are depicted. These three qualities are represented, respectively, by the width of the circles for each mental object, brightness of the fill color, and diameter of the ring of awareness that sits in the present moment of time. Adept meditators are believed to experience higher clarity (phenomenal intensity) in both forms of meditation, whereas MW is believed to represent low clarity or dullness. Low object orientation or engagement represents less mental stickiness and rapid disengagement, leaving available more cognitive resources. Aperture (scope of awareness) is believed to be intentionally narrow for a concentration practice and high for OM practice. In MW, the spotlight of attention is typically narrow and unintentional because of increased engagement with each mental object; resources are subsequently depleted. Adapted, with permission, from Farb et al. 27 and Lutz et al. 124 See Lutz et al. 124 for more extensive descriptions of clarity and aperture, as well as for other potential experiential descriptors relevant to mindfulness.

The (not-so) resting state: mind wandering, evaluation, and self-referential processing

The resting state is commonly referred to as the baseline state of mind in quietly awake individuals and in the context of no particular task. Given its task-negative orientation, the resting state has been used as a functional contrast for most active task-positive conditions in functional neuroimaging studies. 33 , 34 In fact, this state has been used as a control or baseline condition against conditions of interest in an overwhelming number of neuroimaging studies, since such methods were introduced in the early 1980s. 33 The instructions for this passive baseline state are frequently given in some variation of, “let your mind freely wander without thinking of anything in particular,” “relax,” or “stay still and do nothing,” and involve either eyes opened or closed; however, to avoid the occurrence of sleep, many protocols have encouraged the use of open eyes, with (and without) a fixation cross as a visual stimulus on which to rest one's eyes.

Interest in the resting state has mostly reflected the interest in the methodological function by which to probe spontaneous low-frequency (<0.1 Hz) blood oxygen level–dependent (BOLD) fluctuations (LFBF) that demonstrate consistent spatially and temporally coherent connectivity among large-scale functional brain networks. 35 – 38 Across each of the variations in the above-mentioned instructions, there is robust consistency in detection of these networks, suggesting that low-level physiological noise, task load (fixation), eye movement, or the presence of visual input cannot influence the results. 39 Furthermore, these large-scale intrinsic resting-state networks (RSNs) appear to reflect a fundamental aspect of the brain's organization and are consistently apparent across waking states, including task performance, sleep, 40 and even general anesthesia. 41 At least 10 organized RSNs have been identified during rest, including the default mode network (DMN; Fig. 2 ), with each one reflecting specific functions that cohere to the intrinsic connectivity patterns (i.e., language, attention, executive functioning, salience, sensorimotor activity, or mind wandering). 42 – 45

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RSN partition and global fc variability of other networks with the frontoparietal network (FPN). (A) Shown is the network partition of 264 putative functional regions in 10 major RSNs identified at rest through independent component analysis. (B) The connectivity between the FPN and all other RSNs and associated mean variable connectivity are shown. The FPN is believed to act as a hub to enhance connectivity between all other RSNs. Adapted, with permission, from Cole et al. 45

A critical consideration in the interpretation of spontaneous LFBF is the extent to which it is due to specific functional behavior or mentation. There is evidence that varied mental content during the resting time period can modulate functional activity across RSNs, suggesting content has an effect on functional variations in LFBF. 46 , 47 This would seem plausible given that people are engaged in unconstrained mind wandering while laying quietly awake in a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner, with a variety of mental content to account for low-level task activation. 47 Yet, there are a number of arguments 38 supporting the idea that mentation during mind wandering is unlikely to be the dominant source of LFBF. 38 Nevertheless, task relevance is often difficult to determine with SIT, unless it is in direct contrast to some attentionally demanding task. Mental content during mind wandering may indeed be of critical importance to task-related processing (e.g., memory consolidation, prospection) or to other ongoing processes that are fundamental to self-specificity. 14 , 48 , 49 Spontaneous fluctuations found in RSNs are believed to be regulated differently than task- or stimulus-driven brain activity. One popular theory holds that the intrinsic activity from LFBF may be more closely related to long-range coordination of higher frequency electrical activity that facilitates coordination and organization of information processing across several spatiotemporal ranges. 50 , 51 Metabolic demands at rest also do not suggest a strong correlation with cellular activity; 8 , 10 , 51 yet, the resting state does not reflect a zero-activity physiological baseline from which attention manifests.

The resting state has historically been referred to as the default mode, because it has been thought to reflect the dominant mode by which coordinated intrinsic activity ongoing at rest is defaulted to, and to which it returns when attentional demands cease. 8 Despite its regular occurrence, not all minds wander to the same degree; there are stable differences among individuals in the propensity to experience SIT and engage the DMN. 14 , 52 Nevertheless, the reciprocal relationship between the passive task-negative state of rest and the active task-positive states is thought to support two fundamentally different modes of information processing—one serving internally oriented attention and another serving externally oriented attentional demands. The DMN shows the most robust anticorrelation with attentional networks, apparent during externally oriented tasks, suggesting that it is fueling task-negative internally directed functional activity.

The DMN, also described as the hippocampal– cortical memory system, 53 , 54 has most consistently been shown to include the ventral posteromedial cortex (vPMC; including posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and retrosplenial cortex), ventral medial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), posterior inferior parietal lobe (pIPL), hippocampus, and lateral temporal lobe. 36 , 39 , 55 , 56 The DMN has occasionally been reported to also include the dorsomedial/rostromedial PFC (including BA 8, 9, and 10), rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC, or anterior medial PFC), insular cortices, and temporal pole. 52 , 57 , 58 Interestingly, these additional regions have been implicated in task-positive networks and goal-directed activity, suggesting possible overlap of networks with potential functional relevance, and apparent nonstationarity or change over time seen in typical functional connectivity (fc) analyses. 58 Such observations of nonstationarity also suggest a problem with implicating one network supporting a rapidly changing mental state at rest. 47 In fact, some recent work has suggested that the DMN may be broken into multiple subsystems that subserve different dimensions of stimulus-independent or stimulus-oriented mentalizing during the resting state. 52 , 59 , 60

Notably, core DMN regions have been reported to support active states associated with self-reflective, evaluative processes in addition to supporting passive mental states of rest, further suggesting that the resting state involves internally oriented evaluative processing. 36 , 52 , 61 – 63 Self-referential processing involves taking one's self as the object of attention and making judgments or evaluations of one's own thoughts, emotions, or character. 34 , 57 These functional roles have provided the basis for the characterization of the DMN as an evaluative network and has implicated the network in both spontaneous and volitionally mediated mind wandering. 49 The primary nodes of the DMN (PCC and vmPFC) are particularly noteworthy because of their anatomical connections and corresponding functional roles. For example, the vmPFC has direct anatomical connections to the hypothalamus, amygdala, striatum, and brainstem, providing input necessary to process emotion, motivational states, and arousal. 64 Its functional role in coordinating and evaluating basic drives associated with mood, reward, and goal-directed behavior is also strongly supported by the abovementioned anatomy and by its activity in functional brain imaging studies, animal experiments, and behavioral observations in patients with vmPFC lesions. 65 , 66 The PCC is considered to be a network hub with dense anatomical connections across the brain and in particular with the medial temporal lobe, making it and neighboring regions of the vPMC well suited for mediating autobiographical memory retrieval and self-referential processing. 43 , 67 Recent studies have suggested that vPMC activity may be functionally reduced to being “attached to” and “getting caught up in” one's experience, whether it be self- or other-focused, or negatively or positively valenced. 68 In this context, self-reflective processing consumes one's cognitive resources and interferes with ongoing task demands and/or embodied behavior.

A large body of research on the resting state now supports the involvement of the DMN in a diverse array of cognitive processes that are associated with negative or maladaptive mood states, such as rumination, craving, or distraction. 14 , 34 , 68 There is evidence that, in most forms of psychopathology, the DMN is hyperactivated and hyperconnected, showing abnormally high activation during goal-directed tasks. 34 These data suggest that task-dependent downregulation is not as apparent and that patients suffering from psychiatric disorders may be more easily distracted by internal ruminations. 69 Furthermore, greater suppression of the DMN during task performance has been shown to improve accuracy, memory encoding, retrieval, andconsolidation. 70 – 72 Greater DMN activation just prior to a stimulus predicts attentional lapses and decreased accuracy, further providing evidence for its potential role in distraction. 72 However, despite the predominant interpretation that DMN activity is indicative of maladaptive functional processes, this interpretation may be overly simplistic. SIT and associated DMN activity have been characterized by content that is adaptive and constructive. 6 , 57 For example, in healthy individuals, SIT has been shown to facilitate insight, creative problem solving, cognitive control, and prospection for simulating future possible outcomes. 12 , 22 , 73 , 74 The critical point here is that the costs and benefits of DMN activation are context dependent. 14 , 75 Indeed, Smallwood and Andrews-Hanna 14 proposed the context-regulation hypothesis, which states that self-generated thought under conditions that demand continuous attention is unproductive because it can be a source of error, but under nondemanding conditions, it has the potential for benefit.

Although some may argue that there is no apparent functional relationship associated with spontaneous, intrinsic activation of the DMN, an argument can clearly be made claiming the benefit of spontaneous or intentional DMN activation as it reflects our sense of self-identity. DMN activation supports conceptual, linguistic, and symbolic forms of self-representation involving a form of “mental time travel,” which explicitly provides a sense of coherence and continuity with our sense of self in the present moment by allowing one to project representations of self into the future and retrospectively to the past. 14 , 76 Tulving 76 described this mnemonic process involving episodic forms of autobiographical memory as “autonoetic consciousness,” suggesting a conceptual knowing and awareness of self in real time. Tulving and others 77 – 80 argued that this uniquely human ability c provides the necessary cognitive structure for advancing intelligence, building on existing knowledge, discriminating ethical and adaptive behavioral responses to the environment, and “day dreaming” for advanced forms of cognition. One could then imagine that, without opportunities to cultivate autonoetic consciousness, mistakes would be repeated, decisions would be poorly informed, and a sense of identity would be lacking. Mind wandering and the associated DMN activity may, therefore, reflect intrinsic capacities that are necessary to navigate the complex social environment in which humans exist. 14 , 81 Indeed, maintaining a sense of continuity of the self, with reliance on mnemonic processes and DMN activation, contributes to the highest functional and metabolic demands of the brain during waking states.

Mindful awareness: stillness in concentration

From the classical Buddhist Abhidharma perspective, stability and stillness of mind provide freedom from destructive types of emotion and cognition (e.g., anger, craving, greed, lethargy, hyperexcitability) that are rooted in excessive self-absorption or perseveration. 4 , 82 The following metaphor is commonly used to describe how the foundation of mindfulness may contribute to the benefits of a still mind, focusing on cultivating attentional stability and reduced unintentional mind wandering. If a stone is tossed into a still lake, the ripples are clearly visible. Yet, when that lake is unsettled, a single stone's effect is barely noticeable. The same is true of the mind, 83 in that a restless mind that is fraught with many thoughts and emotions is easily distracted, inefficient, and unable to adequately encode information for later retrieval. Furthermore, if one leaves a glass of muddy water still, without moving it, the dirt will settle to the bottom, and the clarity of the water will shine through. Similarly, in mindfulness-based meditation, in which attention is trained to continually return to a single point of concentration, thoughts and emotions settle into what is described as the mind's natural state of stillness, ease, equanimity, and sensory clarity. 3 , 84

In the text Stages of Meditation , an 8th century Indian Buddhist contemplative, Kamalasila describes 10 sequential stages of attention training, referred to as “taming the mind” or “calm abiding” (Pāli: samatha ) that begins with an effortful form of focused attention (FA) and progressively advances toward a state of effortless and objectless awareness. 82 Stability of attention refers to sustained concentration and vigilance that remain unperturbed by distraction or interference from discursive mind wandering, while clarity refers to the phenomenal intensity with which sensory or mental content is experienced. 82 , 85 Insight practice (Pāli: vipassana ), a form of open monitoring (OM) meditation, typically follows calm abiding training with the goal of facilitating meta-awareness of one's own mental habits, increasing the aperture of awareness to all sensory and mental objects that naturally arise and pass. Mindfulness meditation is often taught as an interplay between calm abiding and insight meditation. Therefore, according to the classical Buddhist Abhidharma, one depiction of a restful mind is one that requires concentration, but is calm, alert, and holding an object or stream of objects in effortless awareness.

Although the breath is the most commonly described object of focus in historical Buddhist contexts (e.g., Satipatthāna sutta ), concentration may be on any internal or external sensory object across modalities, the temporal flow of objects arising and passing through space/time, or the restful state where no objects are present ( Table 1 ). One particular contemporary mindfulness system, the Basic Mindfulness system, 86 was developed by Shinzen Young with multiple Buddhist traditions in mind and uses an algorithmic approach that teaches individuals to note and label any experience in three modalities (visual, auditory, or somatic). Sensory objects can be noted and labeled as they arise and pass in OM meditation, or there can be a concentrated focus on one particular modality and experience (i.e., subjective, objective, rest, or flow). A focus on rest is one particular concentration method for cultivating a quiet mind with specificity in each modality, such that absence of the sensory object becomes the object of focus and any impulse to engage with external or internal sensory objects is regulated. Young 86 describes “see rest” as a focus on the “gray-scale blank” with eyes closed or “into image space but not at an image” with eyes open; “hear rest” is described as “mental quiet” or “physical silence” around the practitioner; “feel rest” is referred to as a focus on the “physical relaxation and absence of emotion in one's body.” The different levels of absorption, modalities of concentration, and associated objective neurophysiology have yet to be fully characterized.

Note: The subjective labels “see in,” “hear in,” or “feel in” allow for noting internal sensory experience; “see out,” “hear out,” or “feel out” allow for noting objective sensory experience; “see rest,” “hear rest,” or “feel rest” allow for noting sensory rest; and “see flow,” “hear flow,” or “feel flow” allow for noting the flow of sensory objects across time. 86

Meditative concentration is sometimes referred to as “one-pointedness” (Sanskrit: samādhi) or “absorption” (Pāli: jhāna ). In Tibetan, samādhi is translated as ting nge dzin, where the syllable dzin means “to hold” and the syllable nge is an adverb meaning “to hold something unwaveringly.” The Nikāyas mention variations of samādhi and give descriptions of deepening levels of absorption on the object of attention. Four stages of absorption on form (Sanskrit: rupa jhānas ), four on formless ( arupha jhānas ), and total cessation of perception and feeling ( nirodha-samapatti ) are described in progressive stages of concentration and stillness. At the fourth stage of the rupa jhanas, the mind is focused on a “material” object with equanimity and a narrow aperture of awareness ( Fig. 1 ), such that no other sensory stimuli can enter awareness. By the first formless stage, the meditator achieves insight that there is no longer an object, but rather infinite empty space. The formless states and nondual awareness appear to have similar characteristics, none of which have yet been clearly distinguished in cognitive neuroscience. Stages of jhāna practice have been observed in one functional MRI (fMRI)/electroencephalography (EEG) case study of a long-term Sri Lankan Khema practitioner who was able to progressively move through each of the eight stages of form and formless absorption practice. 87 This study found decreased BOLD activity relative to the resting state and a basic state of concentration (access concentration) across visual, auditory, language, and premotor regions of interest; slight increases in the rACC and ventral striatum; and a shift to lower frequency α and θ bands in EEG. 87 Interestingly, the study suggested that ventral striatal activity corresponds to the subjective experience of joy during early stages. In the historical Hindu context of the yoga suttas, samādhi is believed to represent nondual or transcendent states of conscious awareness and absorption where the sensory or mental object is known directly, beyond name and form, and a feeling of unity or oneness is experienced with the object of meditation. 88 – 91 These descriptions of concentration practice suggest that, through practice and depth of concentration, mental quiet shifts from stable perception of an object to a state of nondual awareness where there is a dissolution of self–object distinctions.

In contemporary contexts, comparisons have been drawn between states of mindfulness in concentration and experiences of “flow,” “the zone,” peak states of performance, and the opposite domain—“zoning out.” Although there are clear similarities of samādhi with states of flow, distinctions can be made. Critically, samādhi is described to involve intentional blocking of sensory information and yet allowing motivationally relevant information to enter conscious awareness. 4 Without volitional control, absorption in an object with focal awareness may also be maladaptive, such that inhibitory processes prevent pertinent sensory information from arising to conscious awareness, potentially leading to an overwhelming sensation and maintenance of emotional reactivity related to the object of focus. 93 Furthermore, the experience of zoning out, as is commonly experienced during a temporally extended, exogenous attentional process that involves low arousal or does not require analytical or critical discernment (e.g., watching television), has also been described as an “intense immersion in the moment;” yet, the individual “typically loses touch with the socially, culturally, and historically constructed world in which he or she lives.” 94 This has been described as “meditation sickness” in Zen traditions that heavily emphasize methods that focus on achieving “inner stillness” over those that engage with the scriptures or discriminate right from wrong in an analytical or critical way 94

Mindful awareness: stillness in nonduality

Later stages of both jhāna and samatha practice place less emphasis on engagement and disengagement with objects of attention and more with nonduality, which refers to the eventual dissolution of subject–object distinctions, nonconceptual awareness, and a phenomenology described as the true nature of mind—an ultimate form of stillness. 82 , 85 Nonduality is most commonly equated with the concept of reflexive awareness (Sanskrit: svasamvitti ) 95 or “bare attention,” coined by the German-born monk Nyanaponika Thera in his book, The Heart of Buddhist Meditation . 3 This nonconceptual emphasis on living in the here and now is believed to have contributed to the foundations of contemporary mindfulness and of the therapeutic recipe for well-being. 94 , 96 In traditional nondual practices of mindfulness (e.g., Chan, Zen, Mahamudra, Dzogchen), 97 there is emphasis on the subject–object distinction as the root of suffering. The Sanskrit author Santideva describes this state of stillness as “remaining like a piece of wood,” such that any impulse toward a particular thought, emotion, or behavior can be heedfully detected but denied full engagement before the mental event requires cognitive resources. 97 , 98 The general instructions for Mahamudra practice are, “Do not chase the past; do not invite the future; rest the awareness occurring now in a clear and nonconceptual state.” 97 There is clear instruction to avoid self-reflective processing and maintain focus in the present; yet, the idea in this practice is not to cultivate a state of samādhi, but rather to release any effort, let go, and not engage with any object. In contrast to the stillness derived from focused concentration, the nondual emphasis is believed to cultivate stillness through an objectless focus. The nondual state has been referred to in Tibetan styles of Dzogchen as “open presence” (Tibetan: rigpa chogzhag ) and also as “awakening” (Pāli: bodhi ) or “nibbana.” Many Buddhist traditions see this as a goal state, where there is a cessation of all “unwholesome” states and all phenomena, including space and time. 99 Understandably, this state of awakening is highly contextualized in the schools of Buddhism from which they are originally described, and there has yet to be objective evidence for the reproducibility of this state. However, the state of open presence has been most closely associated with a nonreferential form of compassion that has been shown to dramatically increase -γ -band activity in advanced meditators across frontal and temporoparietal regions. 100 This activity was also found to correlate very closely with subjective reports of clarity during the practice and remain high in amplitude even after the meditation was complete. 100 γ-Band synchrony is believed to reflect control and temporal binding of local neural activity by distributed neural networks. 101 Theories of attention specify that continuous activation of task-relevant brain areas is driven by high-frequency γ-band activity, and greater magnitude of activity reflects stronger links between attention and sensory inputs. 101 Other neuroimaging experiments on nondual states have demonstrated unique, weak anticorrelations between the attentional networks and the DMN in comparison to stronger anticorrelations during FA practice, suggesting less inhibitory tone over other incoming sensory or mental input. 102 Although both concentration and nondual approaches appear to cultivate stillness in unique ways, the qualitative phenomenology may indeed be similar.

Mindful awareness and discernment versus mind wandering and evaluation

Recently, a number of studies have suggested a therapeutic role of mindfulness-based therapies in neuropsychiatric settings, in which symptoms are reduced explicitly through the reduction of persistent DMN activity and associated narrative self-processing interfering with goal-directed tasks. 103 – 108 This is particularly emphasized in contemporary mindfulness settings where nonconceptual awareness or nonjudgment is emphasized. Indeed, the practice of various styles of mindfulness-based meditation purportedly involve a decrease in self-reflective processing and evaluation. 28 , 30 It is therefore not surprising that, across styles of practice, meditation is found to inhibit activity of nodes within the DMN, similarly to any goal-directed task. 104 , 109 – 114 Furthermore, reports of improved quality of the meditation state 115 or greater meditative experience 116 have been associated with greater decreases in magnitude of activation in primary nodes of the DMN. The PCC, a major node in the DMN, has specifically been targeted for real-time neurofeedback, with the goal of improving one's stability of attention across styles of meditation. 115 , 117 Such results support the idea that meditation practice is undeniably an active cognitive process, and with greater expertise, the magnitude of the inverse correlation with DMN activity becomes greater, 109 suggesting that greater levels of effortless concentration may more robustly reduce activation in the DMN. Generally, one would expect such deactivation of the DMN during any goal-directed task, especially in contrast to a nonmeditative state following instructions to the mind wander 38 or in contrast to a task that specifically recruits self-reflective processing. 118 However, without any explicit instruction to process internal information in a discursive, narrative self-focus, a nonmeditative rest condition may no longer reflect the same mental content, process, or valence for an advanced meditator as in a novice practitioner. In fact, recent data have suggested that meditative expertise may transform the resting state into one that is more similar to a meditative state. 109 , 119 Furthermore, recent studies have demonstrated that spontaneous mind wandering that engages the DMN may still be apparent, but less frequent, during meditation or during nonmeditative states. 105 , 120 Yet, the contrast between a traditional nonmeditative resting state and particular styles of meditation provides considerable insight into the restful mind and how it engages with mental objects with and without awareness.

Although these results appear to suggest that mindfulness is involved in suppressing the DMN and associated self-reflective processing, this interpretation may be an oversimplification for the explanation of meditative expertise. Mindfulness is not merely the opposite of mind wandering, nor is it necessarily always present focused (see Refs. 94 and 96 ). Upon closer inspection of the meaning of mindfulness from the Sanskrit, Pāli, or Tibetan translations, there is a controversial emphasis on cognitive processes “to recollect,” “to bear in mind,” and “to remember.” 2 , 94 , 96 This is in contrast to the typical instruction to stay in the present moment of awareness without judgment. 121 Across schools of Buddhism, two aspects of mindfulness are often described, one in which there exists a nonconceptual state of awareness (Pāli: sati ) and another that involves discernment (Pali: sampajaňňa ), d requiring active reflection, judgment, and action in relation to the sensory or mental objects observed. 2 , 4 In fact, the compound sati-sampajaňňa is often found in the classical Abhidharma or Nikayas to describe a state of mindfulness. 84 Discernment is a cognitive process that reflects continuous access to, and appraisal of, the objects of attention as they arise, so that no thought can be developed into action unchallenged. 2 It facilitates recollection of Dharmic teachings and primes prosocial motivations. It is a process described to help eradicate mental afflictions and motives that potentially affect self-development on a moment-to-moment basis. 122 Without such discernment, the Abhidharma continues to explain that the mind begins to wander toward afflictive thoughts and emotions. Mindfulness and discernment are also described to develop a self- or meta-monitoring faculty that can detect when the goal state of concentration on a particular object has shifted and support a reorientation of attention to the goal-relevant object. This form of meta-awareness implies a nonconceptual, second-order, embodied reflection on experience as a form of experience itself and that is not entangled in the contents of awareness. 123

Given such descriptions, we hypothesize that a state of mindful awareness critically involves rapid flexibility between brain networks that are contextually driven by specific mind states of the practitioner. Building on previous models of mindfulness-based meditation processes, 28 , 30 , 124 we propose that a frontoparietal control network (FPCN) is appropriately situated to couple with, and integrate information across, other contextually relevant networks. The FPCN has the potential to support a volitional focus of stable attention and nonconceptual meta-awareness across bodily systems with a high level of sensory clarity and facilitate rapid discernment and evaluation of each object without strong engagement as mental objects arise and pass in the practitioner's phenomenological space ( Figs. 1 and and3). 3 ). As described by Cole et al. , 45 the FPCN is believed to act as a hub to enhance connectivity between all other RSNs.

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Comparison between mind wandering and OM meditation. Evaluative processes and associated DMN activity process visual, auditory, and somatic modalities and inhibit FPCN, VAN, and DAN attentional networks from gaining meta-awareness. The VAN (vlPFC and TPJ) is critical for reorienting, while the DAN (FEF and IPS) is critical for sustaining attention. Mind wandering and OM meditation process the same inputs (visual, auditory, somatic). OM has increased activation of attentional networks and flexible switching between networks. Mind wandering has less connectivity across networks and therefore lacks the meta-awareness to detect unintentional self-reflective or evaluative processing. The FPCN not only acts as a hub for detecting irrelevant mind wandering, but also for facilitating rapid discernment and evaluation when contextually appropriate. Thickness of lines represents proposed strength of connectivity between networks. SMA/PMA, supplementary and premotor areas; IPS, inferior parietal sulcus; pIPL/aIPL, posterior/anterior inferior parietal lobe; PI, posterior insula; AI, anterior insula; dmPFC, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex; vmPFC, ventromedial prefrontal cortex; r/dACC, rostral/ dACC cortex; S1, primary sensory cortex; PCC, posterior cingulate cortex; RSP, retrosplenial cortex; FPCN, frontoparietal control network; VAN, ventral attention network; DAN, dorsal attention network; FEF, frontal eye field; FPC, frontopolar cortex; dlPFC, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex; vlPFC, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex; MT+, middle temporal visual area; TPJ, temporoparietal junction; RSP, retrosplenial cortex; sc, superior colliculus; sgACC, subgenual anterior cingulate cortex; HF, hippocampal formation.

The dorsal attention network(DAN)is associated with externally directed cognition, including covert and overt shifts of attention, eye movements, and hand–eye coordination. 125 It increases in activation at onset of search, maintains activity while awaiting a target, and further increases when targets are detected. 73 , 125 , 126 It is bilaterally represented and includes frontal eye fields (FEFs), ventral premotor cortex, superior parietal lobe, intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and motion-sensitive middle temporal area (MT+). 54 The DAN facilitates orientation in the sense that it is engaged by cues that prime the system for forthcoming stimuli. 126 In contrast, the ventral attention network (VAN) is not engaged by predictive cues and, in fact, is kept under inhibitory control, likely by top-down regions, such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC), for the purpose of reducing distraction or allowing unintended information from flooding conscious awareness. 125 The VAN is strongly right-hemisphere dominant and includes the temporoparietal junction (TPJ) and ventrolateral PFC (vlPFC) as major nodes. The VAN continues to direct attention to salient and behaviorally relevant sensory stimuli outside the focus of processing maintained by the DAN. 126 The FPCN has been shown to have extensive connectivity with both the DMN and attentional networks (DAN, VAN), supporting the potential to flexibly couple with either network, depending on task demands. 73 The FPCN includes the VAN, nodes of salience (dorsal anterior cin-gulate (dACC) and AIC)) and executive control networks (dlPFC), as well as the anterior inferior parietal lobe (aIPL), frontopolar cortex (FPC), and dmPFC. 54 , 73 Together, this circuit is believed to link sensory representations to motor maps and facilitate the critical meta-awareness function that then engages a circuit breaker for sustained attention and reorientation of attention as new objects arise and pass. 126 Although frontal areas are responsible for voluntary executive control, parietal regions in concert with frontostriatal circuitry are more involved in stimulus–response associations and would likely become more critical as effort decreases. 126 The DAN and VAN may communicate through the FPCN when there is an intention to actively manipulate the information for some purpose. For example, the VAN is critical for semantic retrieval in the context of inhibitory control. 127 Through a relatively short temporal window, it has been proposed that the FPCN may help link active attentional processes associated with sustained vigilance and alerting with the semantic retrieval and reorientation of attention to task-relevant, but currently unattended, stimuli facilitated through the VAN. 126 The FPC takes up a uniquely large volume of space in the human brain, 128 is a critical node of the FPCN, and is thought to be differentially sensitive to changes in demands for stimulus-oriented or stimulus-independent attention along a lateromedial dimension. 74 This may be why this region is sometimes included in the DMN and at other times included with the frontoparietal or executive control network. 52 , 60 , 63 One study observed the recruitment of both rostromedial and lateral FPC during mind wandering with a lack of awareness; whereas, mind wandering with awareness was found to recruit nodes of attentional networks (lateral PFC and dACC) in addition to the PCC/precuneus, TPJ, insula, and temporal pole, suggesting a processing overlap that could account for poor task performance. 63 Yet, future research will have to clarify whether this type of retrospective experience-sampling method represents a form of nonconceptual meta-awareness that is likely in meditative practice or meta-cognition to involve some level of “mental stickiness” and contributes to distraction and future planning.

Although some methodological challenges remain in interpreting some of the existing initial findings for network interactions (see Ref. 31 ), recent cross-sectional fc studies of meditators have generally demonstrated increased connectivity between the two main nodes of the DMN (PCC and vmPFC) and between nodes of the DMN and salience and executive networks during a nonmeditative resting state. 109 , 111 , 114 , 129 – 132 These studies reflect changes that are sustained in nonmeditative states. In a small number of studies, increased fc has been found between DMN nodes and task-positive regions (e.g., dACC, dlPFC) during and across styles of meditation practice ( Fig. 3 ). Although some of the methodological discrepancies are difficult to interpret, these preliminary studies support the hypothetical flexible switching between networks and the potential functional relevance between nonconceptual awareness and discernment.

There is now evidence to suggest that the FPCN may be actively recruited through both OM and FA meditative practice. 133 – 135 Recent meta-analyses of both morphometric and functional neuroimaging studies of FA and OM have demonstrated increased size and activity in regions of the brain associated with the FPCN (FPC, dACC, dmPFC, dlPFC), areas also associated with the salience and executive networks. 133 , 135 Parts of the DMN (PCC, pIPL) have been shown to decrease in activity during OM and FA mindfulness–based practices. 134 , 135 These data suggest mindful awareness may not only contribute to a quiet mind embedded in concentration, but may also be critical for allowing individuals to flexibly switch between externally and internally driven processes in a volitional manner, drawing from inner reflection and focusing externally with more control than a control population. 30

Thus, a more nuanced reflection on the state of mindfulness, especially in the context of OM meditation, demonstrates significant similarities, and an interaction, with a state of mind wandering. Both mind wandering and OM meditation involve attentional orientation to mental objects arising and passing with each moment ( Fig. 1 ). Yet, subtle differences in attentional engagement, task relevance, emotional reactivity, and perceptual clarity determine the extent to which each state, and the content associated with each state, contributes adaptively (or not) to current mood or future behavior. In the context of OM meditation, 30 , 124 , 136 thoughts or emotions may arise, but the practitioner is typically instructed to refrain from engaging purposely with the content and to rather remain a witness as a nonattached observer to the content as it arises and passes without any form of appraisal. Such attentional processing will reduce cognitive elaboration and, thus, increase the speed at which one may disengage from objects of attention or reduce mental stickiness—a concept often described in contemporary mindfulness 137 , 138 as a disengagement deficit, more often found in SIT, and as a natural tendency to dedicate resources to an object of attention, such that few resources remain to capture any other pertinent environmental information until one is able to disengage and reorient. Over time, this form of mental stickiness on particular emotional stimuli can become habitual, contextually dependent, and highly automatized into the sensory–affective– motor scripts and schemas that dictate tendencies toward behavior. 139 – 141

There is some evidence suggesting that intensive training in meditation techniques reduces mental stickiness by enhancing monitoring of attention, 142 increasing a distributed attentional focus, 143 – 145 enhancing speed of attention allocation, engagement, and subsequent disengagement from serially presented objects of attention. 146 One of the best examples of this decrease in stickiness, or faster disengagement, in the extant meditation literature is shown by data from an attentional blink task 147 by practitioners who completed 3 months of intensive meditation training. 146 A smaller attentional blink and reduced brain-resource allocation to an object of attention (the first target) were found, as reflected by a smaller target 1 (T1)-elicited P3b, a brain-potential index of resource allocation peaking around 300–450 ms ( Fig. 4 ). 146 Those individuals with the largest decrease in brain-resource allocation to T1 generally showed the greatest reduction in attentional-blink size, and improved detection of T2. These observations provide strong support for the view that the ability to accurately identify T2 depends on the efficient deployment of resources to T1. Such data are also suggestive of reduced elaborative processing in the context of goal-directed activity. It should be clear that this process of discernment and evaluation may be operating below conscious awareness, at the level of nonconscious perceptual processing—an aspect of attentional filtering that has previously been described as a potential source for affective and attentional bias. 29 , 148 , 149

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Brain potentials from electrode Pz, time-locked to T1 onset on short-interval trials (220–440 ms) as a function of session, T2 accuracy, and group. Selective reduction in T1-elicited P3b amplitude in no-blink trials is evident in meditation practitioners. Adapted, with permission, from Slagter et al. 146

In this article, we illustrated how the phenomenology of a restful mind can take adaptive or maladaptive forms that are context and content dependent. A sense of peace and quiet in the mind is proposed to arise through mental training in concentration, nonconceptuality, and discernment, in contrast to the untrained frenetic restlessness of mental time travel that is characteristic of daily activity in the postmodern setting. The frenetic resting state and associated brain network dynamics are believed to help scaffold attention and emotion throughout everyday waking life, but with the potential to interfere with cognitive performance, mood, and affect when mind wandering occurs in the context of cognitive demand. Mindfulness-based meditation is often viewed as the antidote for mind wandering, positing an overly simplistic polarization of mind wandering as bad and mindfulness as good. However, building on existing efforts to introduce a more nuanced perspective on the relationship between mindfulness and mind wandering, 32 we describe a potential neurocognitive framework in which mental training associated with mindfulness allows the practitioner to more skillfully gain volitional control, flexibility, and awareness over mind wandering, evaluation, and associated DMN activity without necessarily suppressing or avoiding the flow of mental content. Considering the functional role and dynamics between RSNs is complex, and, thus, the exact role played by the DMN and other attentional networks is likely to be context specific and modulated by the specific practices in which an individual engages. As a function of the situational demands, the FPCN is specifically proposed to rapidly and flexibly couple with the DMN and other attentional networks for contextually appropriate engagement and disengagement with relevant objects in the ongoing stream of mental and sensory content. Thus, a sense of tranquility or stillness of mind involves the elimination of distortions and distractions in an effortless and sustained form of awareness and can have lasting effects on one's mental habits, biases, and worldview in relation to the surrounding world. It is likely that a highly developed meta-awareness in the context of mindfulness-based practice may offer a key mechanism for rapid discernment of what is relevant at early stages of attentional processing while also providing sensory clarity and emotional stability through each moment of experience.

Unfortunately, there is a particular rhetoric surrounding the emphasis of nonconceptuality, nonjudgment, and present-moment focus that continues to lead to ethical, social, and developmental passivity in the contemporary mindfulness movement. Given the secular emphasis of mindfulness on the present moment, there is regrettably less emphasis on the benefits from an efficient ability to draw consciously from past experiences and the capacity to reflect inwardly. On closer inspection of the state of mindfulness, we discuss here the benefits of judgment, evaluation, conceptuality, and DMN activity to provide a more nuanced description of brain network interactions and the benefits delivered by these meditation techniques that are continuing to emerge in contemporary society. More broadly, these skills are not emphasized for personal gain, but rather to ultimately nurture the human connection and sense of meaning and purpose that provides the foundation for the benefits of realizing stillness.

Although the current theoretical analysis remains speculative, continued consideration of the resting state in comparison to meditation practice is likely to reveal specialized insights into brain function, energy metabolism, conscious awareness, and therapeutic relevance for psychiatric conditions. Future research investigating differences between FA and OM practices may help clarify critical differences between focal and ambient awareness, and the ability for individuals to volitionally modulate types of information that enter awareness through engagement and disengagement processes. Other considerations for future research should include tracking phenomenology using qualitative empathetic interviewing skills 150 with explicit second-person methods built into the neuroimaging studies, in addition to correlating first-person reports with third-person measures of brain activity. This method could involve independent, unbiased interviewers who may help participants explicate their experiences in order to direct them toward phenomenological aspects of their experience and away from theorizing about it. Examining the stability of RSNs across meditation states, axiological frameworks, and across a phenomenology of clarity and mind wandering, may better reflect consistent therapeutic targets that are context specific. More consistency across fc analyses will have to involve choosing consistent seeds for analyses and tracking functional changes across states and rest in both clinical samples and meditation-naive subjects who do not have a self-selection bias. As research progresses in this field, it is likely that differences between novice and advanced meditators will become apparent and may account for discrepancies in the ability to sustain/maintain nonconceptual forms of awareness during meditation and the speed with which practitioners can make discerning judgments. Indeed, even the greatest meditators report fluctuations in level of clarity with which meditative quality is experienced over time. Thus, future research would benefit from having closer measurements of neurophysiological changes as they directly relate to first-person reports on phenomenology of experiences, such as clarity in the context of meditation and throughout daily life.

Acknowledgments

The authors express gratitude to A.P. for the constructive feedback. F.Z. and D.R.V. wrote the paper.

a Eliot, T.S. 1943. Burnt Norton. Four Quartets. Orlando: Harcourt.

b Early schools of Theravada Buddhism describe a collection of scriptures and suttas in the Pāli Canon.

c Although Tulving argues that mental time travel is uniquely human, there is good evidence to suggest that scrub jays can cache food in a manner that reflects both planning for the future and some form of mental time travel to retrieve detailed information on when and where the food was cached. 79

d Sampajaňňa is also described in nondual traditions as a form of “monitoring,” rather than “clear comprehension” in Theravadan texts. Thus, this aspect of mindfulness may reflect a state of meta-awareness, decentering, or dereification that reflects an interaction between task-set retention and background awareness. 97

Conflicts of interest : The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Body & Mind

Is a wandering mind an unhappy one.

Hispanic man daydreaming in office

When your teacher told you to stop daydreaming and pay attention, she might actually have helped improve your mood as well as your school performance — if the findings of a new study on mind wandering are anything to go by. The research, published in Science , shows that a wandering mind — whether you’re fantasizing about your sunny honeymoon or ruminating on a brutal divorce — is linked to low mood.

“Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all,” the authors of the study, Harvard doctoral student Matthew Killingsworth and psychology professor Daniel Gilbert, write in the new paper. And that unique ability, they found, does not make for a happier species.

To study the relationship between mind wandering and happiness, Killingsworth and Gilbert created an iPhone app — available at Trackyourhappiness.org — which contacted participants at random times during the day to ask about their mental state and their mood. About 5,000 people responded, ranging in age from 18 to 88 and living in 83 countries around the world; Killingsworth and Daniel analyzed responses from 2,250 for the study. ( More on Time.com: Why We Conform to the Group: It Gets Your Brain High )

The app asked people three questions, related to happiness (“How are you feeling right now?”), activity (“What are you doing right now?”) and mind wandering (“Are you currently thinking about something other than what you’re currently doing?”). The results showed that people’s minds wandered a lot, regardless of what they were doing: people reported letting their minds wander 46.9% of the time, and at least 30% of the time during every activity except having sex. What’s more, people reported feeling less happy when their minds wandered than when they didn’t — even when the tasks at hand weren’t enjoyable.

“Our main result is that mind wandering on average is associated with less happiness,” says Killingsworth. “Unpleasant mind wandering in particular makes the single biggest difference in happiness [levels]. However even you if took out [negative trains of thought], mind wandering was still associated with less happiness.” ( More on TIME.com: Doodling May Help You Pay Attention )

The direction in which the mind ran off was also found to be unrelated to the person’s current situation and didn’t lift his or her mood, even when thinking about pleasant things. In other words, when people were doing fun things, their minds didn’t necessarily go to pleasant places, nor did people seem to be able to escape unpleasant tasks by drifting into a better mental spot. “When people are engaged in doing unenjoyable tasks, even when they’re thinking about pleasant things, it’s not having a positive impact. That’s surprising to me,” says Killingsworth.

On the other hand, the study did find that negative mind wandering was associated with even more unhappiness. And, in general, the researchers found that what a person was thinking about was a better predictor of happiness than whatever he or she was doing in that moment. ( More on Time.com: Spend Too Much For Those Shoes? Blame Your Genes )

Although previous research has shown that feeling down can lead to mind wandering, this study found that the reverse was true as well: mind wandering often predicted bad moods, rather than following them. “I think there’s lots of evidence that rumination and worrying can cause a lot of stress in and of themselves,” notes Alan Marlatt, co-author of Mindfulness-Based Relapse Prevention, who was not associated with the study. Marlatt has spent decades studying meditation and other techniques to help focus the mind to fight addictions.

Indeed, in contrast to mind wandering, being able to focus on the present is thought to boost happiness. Most meditation techniques involve learning to “be in the moment,” and numerous studies have linked meditation to greater happiness, better ability to cope with stress and pain and even improvements in physical health. “It gives you more opportunity to stand back and take a moment to choose what to do next, instead of having your mind on auto-pilot and you’re not there,” says Marlatt. The ability to call home the wandering mind, and just “take time to be where you are,” through techniques like focusing on breathing can “make a huge difference,” he says. ( More on TIME.com: Losing Focus? Studies Say Meditation May Help )

But that’s not to say that mind wandering is all bad: innovative ideas and insights often arise through free association. And being able to plan and strategize effectively require a focus on the future, not the now. “There’s no doubt that this capacity is beneficial in a variety of ways and it’s certainly very possible that a lot of creative thinking involves mind wandering,” says Killingsworth.

His research is ongoing, and Killingsworth urges interested participants to visit Trackyourhappiness.org .

“In this electronic age where everyone’s on the phone all the time and [constantly distracted], it’s interesting to use an app to maybe turn that around and ask people to be more mindful instead of just answering the next email,” says Marlatt.

More on Time.com: Why We Strive for Money Over Time — and Why It’s a Mistake How Much Happiness Can Money Buy? About $75,000 Worth Bowl Half Empty? How to Tell If Your Dog Is a Pessimist

Neuroscience
Basic Psychological Processes

The Wandering Mind: Why You Should Know What it Is

Is your neighbour an alien 'disguised as humans'? This Harvard study will blow your mind

A liens may now be more than just a set of conspiracy theories. Yes, you heard it right! A Harvard University study has claimed that aliens may have been living among us disguised as human beings.

The study comes after decades of research has tried to prove the existence of extraterrestrial life in this universe.

A new paper from Human Flourishing Program in Harvard University has suggested that UFO's or the 'unidentified anomalous phenomena' might be residing underground, on the moon, or even amidst humans.

Also read: Elon Musk claims alien identity, links human brain function to AI purpose

It also explored the idea that UFOs could be a means of travel the aliens use to visit their Earth-based alien friends.

The Harvard study said the author of the paper "became increasingly aware" of the depth of evidence and theory that tentatively supports another extraterrestrial explanation: "The 'crypto terrestrial' hypothesis (CTH) – our focus here – which holds that UAP may reflect activities of NHIs concealed here on Earth (e.g., underground) and its environs."

Also read: Is it a ghost or an alien? Creepy video from Las Vegas is not fake; expert explains why

It has investigated to lengths the concept of the "crypto terrestrials" beings, which it claims lives among us as humans, and have originated from the future of the Earth or have likely descended from the "intelligent" dinosaurs.

According to the Harvard study, these "crypto terrestrials" beings can come from these four forms:

Human crypto terrestrials .

Human Crypto terrestrials are said to come from an ancient human civilisation that was “technologically advanced” and was destroyed long ago. The remnant form of that civilisation is believed to be one of the forms of the “crypto terrestrials”.

Also read: Elon Musk rejects ‘alien’ connection to missing flight MH370; says, ‘If I did, I would post about it on X instantly’

Hominid or Theropod Crypto Terrestrials

These crypto terrestrials are also believed to have been “technologically advanced”, however, these are said to be non-human civilisation which consists of some terrestrial animal who evolved to live in underground. According to the study, the Hominid or Theripod's could be a descendant of an ape-like animal or that "unknown and intelligent dinosaurs".

Former Extraterrestrial or Extratempestrial Crypto Terrestrials

These crypto terrestrials have likely arrived on the Earth after originating from distant parts of the cosmos or from the future of humanity, concealing their presence in stealth, possibly on the Moon.

Also read: Aliens ‘hitching rides’ on meteors to colonise Earth? Study says…

Magical Crypto Terrestrials

As the name suggests, the study states that this type of earthly aliens are more likely to be "earthbound angels". These entities connect with the human world through means that are less technological and more mystical, such as fairies, elves, and nymphs.

Notably, the Harvard researchers have admitted that this study will "likely to be regarded skeptically by most scientists," but have urged the scientific community to consider their claim "in a spirit of epistemic humility and openness." The paper is yet to be peer-reviewed.

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Wandering mind not a happy mind
"These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind." This new research, the authors say, suggests that these traditions are right. Killingsworth and Gilbert's 2,250 subjects in this study ranged in age from 18 to 88, representing a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and occupations.
PDF A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind. Matthew A. Killingsworth* and Daniel T. Gilbert. Unlike other animals, human beings spend a lot of time thinking about what is not going on around them, contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or will never happen at all. Indeed, "stimulus-independent thought " or ...
A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
The variance explained by mind wandering was largely independent of the variance explained by the nature of activities, suggesting that the two were independent influences on happiness. In conclusion, a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind. The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive ...
Mind wandering is fine in some situations, Harvard-based study says
While most of the psychological literature calls mind wandering a detrimental "failure of executive control" or a "dysfunctional cognitive state," a new study led by Paul Seli, a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow working in the lab of Dan Schacter, suggests that in some cases there's no harm in it.
A Wandering Mind is an Unhappy One
According to the data from the Harvard group's study, the particular way you spend your day doesn't tell much about how happy you are. ... "a human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering ...
Minding the details of mind wandering
Researchers first began examining mind wandering — or "task-unrelated images and thoughts" — in the late 1970s. Despite a noted difference between intentional and unintentional modes, the distinction had little impact on the field and consequently fell by the wayside. "Over the years, a number of different constructs have been unified ...
A wandering mind is an unhappy mind
A wandering mind is an unhappy mind Science. 2010 Nov 12;330(6006) :932. doi ... Matthew A Killingsworth 1 , Daniel T Gilbert. Affiliation 1 Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA. [email protected]; PMID: 21071660 DOI: 10.1126/science.1192439 Abstract We developed a smartphone technology to sample people's ongoing thoughts ...
A Wandering Mind Is an Unhappy Mind
We developed a smartphone technology to sample people's ongoing thoughts, feelings, and actions and found (i) that people are thinking about what is not happening almost as often as they are thinking about what is and (ii) found that doing so typically makes them unhappy.
PDF Mind-Wandering in Adolescents Predicts Worse ...
mind-wandering and enhanced mPFC-SN coupling may reﬂect heightened bottom-up inﬂuence of affective and sensory salience on DMN-mediated internally oriented thought. ... study in unselected adults, Killingsworth and Gilbert3 re-ported that participants were mind-wandering nearly half (47%) of the time that they were surveyed. Not only was
Mind is a frequent, but not happy, wanderer: People ...
"Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities," says Killingsworth, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard. "This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable ...
On the relationship between mind wandering and mindfulness
Mind wandering (MW) and mindfulness have both been reported to be vital moderators of psychological wellbeing. Here, we aim to examine how closely associated these phenomena are and evaluate the ...
When Mind Wandering is a Strategy, Not a Disadvantage
In a study published in Psychological Science, postdoctoral fellow Paul Seli of Harvard Univeristy and colleagues Jonathan S. A. Carriere, Jeffrey D. Wammes, Evan F. Risko, Daniel L. Schacter, and Daniel Smilek found that people can adjust their rate of mind wandering during an attention-demanding task without decreasing their performance on ...
Does Mind-Wandering Make You Unhappy?
As it turns out, there is a strong relationship between mind-wandering now and being unhappy a short time later, consistent with the idea that mind-wandering is causing people to be unhappy. In contrast, there's no relationship between being unhappy now and mind-wandering a short time later. Mind-wandering precedes unhappiness but unhappiness ...
Less stress, clearer thoughts with mindfulness meditation
Another study showed that most people find it hard to focus on the present and that the mind's wandering can lead to stress and even suffering. Despite the rising acceptance of mindfulness, many people still think the practice involves emptying their minds, taking mini-naps, or going into trances.
The Wandering Mind vs. Mindfulness
The mPFC and PCC are critical nodes of activation during typical mind wandering, self-reflection, and the core areas for the DMN. Choiceless Awareness (green bars), Loving-Kindness (red), and Concentration (blue) meditations. Note that decreased activation in PCC in meditators is common across different meditation types. n = 12 per group.
Is a Wandering Mind an Unhappy Mind? The Affective Qualities of
An example of this is a study that proved people's capacity to modulate the occurrence of mind wandering when a cognitive task was impending, which evidences a decision to stop wandering as cognitive resources need to be recruited for the execution of another pressing activity (Seli et al., 2017a, b).
Harvard Psychologists Reveal the Real Reason We're All So Distracted
In a study conducted with 2,250 adults, they concluded that we spend around 47 percent of every waking hour "mind wandering." Also called "stimulus-independent thought," mind wandering is an ...
The brain on silent: mind wandering, mindful awareness, and states of
Abstract. Mind wandering and mindfulness are often described as divergent mental states with opposing effects on cognitive performance and mental health. Spontaneous mind wandering is typically associated with self-reflective states that contribute to negative processing of the past, worrying/fantasizing about the future, and disruption of ...
Is a Wandering Mind an Unhappy One?
To study the relationship between mind wandering and happiness, Killingsworth and Gilbert created an iPhone app — available at Trackyourhappiness.org — which contacted participants at random times during the day to ask about their mental state and their mood. About 5,000 people responded, ranging in age from 18 to 88 and living in 83 ...
The Happiest People Don't Let Their Minds Wander, According to a
A recent Harvard study reveals that stray thoughts and wandering minds are directly related to unhappiness. [1] The study discovered that those with constantly wandering minds were less likely to ...
The Wandering Mind: Why You Should Know What it Is
A study of the wandering mind. Researchers Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert of Harvard University conducted a study in this regard. The main question they posed was "What are the great causes of happiness?" Through an app, they asked thousands of people around the world to answer questions over a period of time. They asked such ...
Is your neighbour an alien 'disguised as humans'? This Harvard study
This Harvard study will blow your mind. Aliens may now be more than just a set of conspiracy theories. Yes, you heard it right! A Harvard University study has claimed that aliens may have been ...
11 Good Study Habits to Develop
Here are 11 tips to improve your study habits: Find a good place to study. Minimize distractions. Take breaks. Space out your studying. Set study goals for each session. Reward yourself. Study with a group. Take practice tests.

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Time, valence, and imagination: a comparative study of thoughts in restricted and unrestricted mind wandering

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The brain on silent: mind wandering, mindful awareness, and states of mental tranquility

Fadel Zeidan

Introduction

The (not-so) resting state: mind wandering, evaluation, and self-referential processing

Mindful awareness: stillness in concentration

Mindful awareness: stillness in nonduality

Mindful awareness and discernment versus mind wandering and evaluation

Acknowledgments

Body & Mind