Quit Paying Attention!

A REGULAR DOSE OF DAYDREAMING COULD BE GOOD FOR YOUR BRAIN.

- Brittany Moya del Pino

Ready? Here's your assignment: Watch a series of white, single-digit numbers flash against a black computer screen, each visible for slightly longer than one second. Your job is to press one key when the number three appears, and to press a different key for all the other numbers. The computer will respond to your actions with "Correct!" after each appropriate key strike or "Incorrect!" if you make a mistake.

It's easy, right? And it's somewhat fun at first.

But several minutes into this, your thoughts will probably drift from striking the correct keys to wondering how much longer you'll have to keep doing this. Then you might begin thinking about why one of your friends said that weird thing during class today, or what you have planned for the weekend. Meanwhile, your fingers are still pecking away at the keys.

This switch from thinking about the computer task to thinking about other things is called mind wandering, or daydreaming. It's something we're all familiar with because we all do it.

Daydreaming gets you in trouble if you're caught doing it during class, or in the middle of a basketball game, or anything else that requires focus and quick thinking. But here, with the computer task and its flashing white numbers, daydreaming isn't such a bad thing. Experiments like this one have taught scientists when and why our minds naturally wander, as well as how daydreams can boost brainpower.

Where Is Your Head?

Scientists have defined daydreams as private, internal streams of consciousness unrelated to our immediate circumstances or external tasks. Put simply, that means that daydreams are thoughts that have nothing to do with what you're doing while you're thinking them.