Meditation Decreases Mind Wandering
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Are you losing your mind to absentmindedness? Absentmindedness is mind wandering. It is common. About 30% of a person’s daily activities involve mind wandering (Kane et al., 2017). When a person is involved in tasks that require low energy output, mind wandering re-orients the person from external tasks to internal tasks, like thinking about the past and planning for the future (Brandmeyer & Delorme, 2018). An ordinary mind-wandering experience happens when driving. Have you experienced driving along a well-known route and arriving at your destination without remembering the drive? Your mind was wandering, less engaged in driving, and more internally focused because the external environment was under-stimulating. The former example highlights that mind wandering can cross into dissociative behavior, resulting in a dangerous situation. Mind wandering when the external environment is under, or over-stimulating produces positive and negative effects. Mind wandering can factor into ADD, ADHD, anxiety, depression, rumination, trauma, and OCD (Roy et al., 2024). In an extreme expression, the mind meanders into a daydream fantasy world with characters and plot lines. However, mind wandering under the right circumstances can be beneficial. It promotes creativity, solidifies memory, and helps one prepare for future events.
Mind wandering is sometimes a maladaptive response to significant mental health issues like trauma. Anyone can have mental health issues with comorbid persistent mind wandering. Pathological mind wandering can significantly impact the quality of one’s life. For example, rumination with comorbid anxiety and mind wandering could magnify the projection of worrying thoughts about future events. Twenty-five percent of mind wandering involves future planning (Junker & Grübaum, 2024).
Mind wandering is a neurological event involving structures associated with the default mode network, a neurological system active when a person is internally focused (Brewer et al., 2011). The frontal-parietal control network and regions engaged in executive functions are also involved. The frontal-parietal control network modulates activity in other brain regions, providing cognitive flexibility to fulfill attentional demands. It moderates the default mode network (Spreng et al., 2013). During mind wandering, regions engaged with executive functioning co-activate with the default mode network. Both externally and internally focused activity, as well as executive functions, can induce default mode network activity. Default mode network activity is involved in mind wandering and meditation.
If mind wandering keeps you from staying on task, meditation can help. Meditation affects attention and sensory perception regulation and may decrease activation in structures associated with the default mode network. Mindfulness meditation training for two weeks increased the GRE (graduate record examination) verbal scores of people inclined to absentmindedness (Mrazek et al., 2013). Fazekas and Nemeth (2020) asserted that cognition in waking and dream states is similar. Therefore, mind wandering might be a mild dream in the awake state that can unfold as spontaneous random imagery and thoughts. Less experienced meditators generate more imagery and thoughts during meditation than more experienced meditators. Brandmeyer and Delorme (2018) reported that expert meditators had deeper meditation experiences with less mind wandering than less experienced meditators. In addition, less experienced meditators had increased drowsiness, an effect that was absent for experienced meditators.
Mind wandering is a state of absentmindedness that promotes creativity, solidifies memory, and helps one plan and prepare for future events. However, in its pathological expression, the dissociative state can negatively contribute to mental health challenges like anxiety, depression, and rumination. In an extreme presentation, maladaptive daydreaming can keep a person anchored in fantasy. Studies on mantra meditation and mindfulness exercises demonstrate positive impacts correlating to decreased mind wandering and maladaptive daydreaming. Although mind wandering is an ordinary brain state and does not always negatively intrude into daily activities, having a tool to manage episodic intrusion is useful. It is reasonable to consider that anyone with a daily meditation or mindfulness practice can benefit from the likely result, decreased activation in the default mode network. It may be especially productive during high-stress events or ongoing circumstances when a person is more vulnerable to the desire to check out.
References
Brandmeyer, T., & Delorme, A. (2018). Reduced mind wandering in experienced meditators and associated EEG correlates. Experimental Brain Research, 236(9), 2519–2528. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00221-016-4811-5
Brewer, J. A., Worhusky, P. D. Gray, J. R., Tang, Y., Weber, J., & Hedy, K. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. PNAS, 108(50), 20254-59
Fazekas, P., & Nemeth, G. (2020). Dreaming, mind-wandering, and hypnotic dreams. Frontiers in Neurology, 11, 565673–565673. https://doi.org/10.3389/fneur.2020.565673
Junker, F. T., & Grünbaum, T. (2024). Is the wandering mind a planning mind? Mind & Language, 39(5), 706–725. https://doi.org/10.1111/mila.12503
Kane, M. J., Gross, G. M., Chun, C. A., Smeekens, B. A., Meier, M. E., Silvia, P. J., & Kwapil, T. R. (2017). For whom the mind wanders, and when, varies across laboratory and daily-life settings. Psychological Science, 28(9), 1271-1289. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617706086
Mrazek, M. D., Smallwood, J., & Schooler J. W. (2013). Mindfulness and mind wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. Emotion, 12(3), 442-448. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0026678
Roy, A., Girija, V. S., & Kitzlerová, E. (2024). The role of momentary dissociation in the sensory cortex: A neurophysiological review and its implications for maladaptive daydreaming. Medical Science Monitor, 30, e944209-e944209-10. https://doi.org/10.12659/MSM.944209
Spreng, R. N., Sepulcre, J., Turner, G. R., Stevens, W. D., & Schacter, D. L. (2013). Intrinsic architecture underlying the relations among the default, dorsal attention, and frontoparietal control networks of the human brain. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 25(1), 74–86. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn_a_00281
Video: Meditation Decreases Mind Wandering
Meditation Decreases Mind Wandering
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