Knowing about the Default Mode Network, and learning how to regulate it, is a huge step towards better mental health. Pay attention to your mind and its constant activity throughout the day, and you’re seeing this network at work.
The Essential Neuroscience
The Default Mode Network is the collection of brain regions that are highly active when we aren’t occupied with any tasks, and that are less active when we are. The brain remains as active in both situations, except in different areas.
It’s comprised mainly of the mPFC (midline of the prefrontal cortex) and the PCC (posterior cingulate cortex), which is connected to the limbic system.
When we’re engaged in an active task, like work, or chess, or watching a film, the DMN calms down, and only reaches its habitual level when the task is over and we’re back to “doing nothing”.
Ask anyone what was happening in their mind is this period of “doing nothing”, and they’ll most likely tell you they were absorbed in thought, particularly self-referential thought.
Our mind wanders to memories of the current day and week and years gone by, to plans, to fantasies, to rumination, to comments on our current surroundings, and so on. In this way, it plays an enormous role in the construction and maintenance of our identity, both for good and for bad.
“The default mode turns on when we chill out, not doing anything that requires focus and effort.” – Richard Davidson & Daniel Goleman
Wandering = Unhappy
Harvard researchers further investigated this everyday mind-wandering by asking thousands of people to monitor the content of their thoughts at various points in the day. Their conclusion was that “a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.”
The inner experience of this mode, to be informal about it, is a combination of mental torture and zombie mode. For one thing, you churn over all your problems, unpleasant experience, regretful actions and words, and so on. This can turn torturous.
Not only that, this mental barrage is so overpowering and absorbing that it cuts off our access to our senses. We lose contact with the sights and sounds around us, not to mention our body. We’re in zombie mode, walking – or sitting, or standing, or driving, or eating, or cleaning – but in another world, overcome by this mental tsunami.
In one sense, you can think that we’re victims of the DMN, but in another, we’re to blame because we’re totally addicted to it. We buy into our thinking. We feed our thinking. We never try to recover from this addiction.
It’s no wonder we’re addicted to our phones, food, cigarettes and alcohol, and rarely tap in to a sense of peace and presence. We’re essentially the victims of an incessant bully that tortures us all day long, particularly in moments when we could otherwise experience joy and presence, and we’re addicted to its abuse.
If the Default Mode Network’s activity becomes especially dominant and negative, we can end up in a state of depression and anxiety.
Unhooking from the Default Mode Network
Quietening the DMN, unsurprisingly, brings a sense of relief and joy. We all experience freedom from it during intense work and exercise, or when watching a film. These activities “take our mind off” ourselves and our problems.
The good news is that, like the Fight-or-Flight Mode, we can train ourselves to be free of the Default Mode Network’s barrage, and doing so helps you find a remarkable sense of peace and ease that, unfortunately, few people consistently taste.