What is mind-wandering?
A recent study (1) measuring dimensions of mindfulness describes mind-wandering as three-fold: it happens without our effort, the activity is not focused on any particular object and the person who is wandering is unaware of the activity (1). If you have ever read a book and then realized that you have no idea what you just read, then you can be sure you know what mind-wandering is.
Is mind-wandering bad or good?
Science hasn’t yet solved the bad and good dilemma of the mind-wandering. Science, however, accumulated more evidence on negative mind-wandering effects than positive.
Many religious and spiritual practices, as well as self-help advice on productivity, encourages to keep your mind focused, “to be present”. The following passage from Buddhist text also indicates the possible drawback of the wondering mind. “Monks, I know not of any other single thing so intractable as the untamed mind. The untamed mind is indeed a thing untractable. "Monks, I know not of any other thing so tractable as the tamed mind. The tamed mind is indeed a thing tractable. <…>” The Book of the Ones (2).
The price we pay for mind-wandering
The biggest negative effect commonly cited is the loss of performance. A review study (3) concluded that wandering mind might be responsible for a failure in academic success, loss in performance during reading and cognitive ability. Mind-wandering seems to bring trouble in goal-oriented tasks in general (4).
“The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost” (5). The emotional costs we pay for mind-wandering are negative moods (3) and lower happiness (5). When our mind wanders researcher register an increased activity in a brain region called default mode network (4,6). The default mode network shows increased activity in depressed patients (7), so it is not surprising we have an emotional cost associated with mind- wandering.
So what is the mind-wandering for?
By now we know, that mind-wandering makes us unhappy and it reduces our productivity. This doesn’t sound like a really great mechanism that we should have kept during our evolution? So why did we keep it?
We don’t really have a say in what the evolution leaves us with. What the process "cares" is how to increase our fitness at any cost. Happiness is arbitrary, an illusion that we seek to keep us motivate to be in the wheel of an evolutionary process.
Nobody can be certain why mind-wandering increases our fitness, but it could be that this mechanism evolved to helps us in building stronger social connections, better corporation plans and anticipate future. It also might be potentially useful in relieving boredom (3) and pain (8). Perhaps one of the most relevant benefits of mind-wandering in our society is creative thinking and learning. Mind-wandering might help to find novel solutions to some life problems (9) and provide meaningful insights (10) after the incubation period (3).
Is there a way to tame our wandering mind?
It might look by now that we are slaves of evolution. We keep spinning on the wheel of evolution with no way out. But the great thing about evolution that it has left us with many mechanisms to increase our success. One of such mechanism is our brain flexibly.
Brain flexibility allows us to recognize that we are all following the agenda of evolution, but we have a choice which parts we subscribe too. It is perhaps not a coincidence that Buddha has told us there is a way out of suffering. Research (4 ) is catching up with what Buddhist knew for centuries: we can tame wandering mind through meditation. Any type of mindfulness meditation can decrease activity in your default mode network (4) helping you to be more focused on the task and with higher awareness (1).
References
1. Lutz A, Jha AP, Dunne JD, Saron CD. Investigating the phenomenological matrix of mindfulness-related practices from a neurocognitive perspective. American Psychologist. 2015;70(7):632–658.2. Taming the Mind: Discourses of the Buddha, edited by The Buddhist Publication Society. Access to Insight (Legacy Edition), 30 November 2013, http://www.accesstoinsight.org/lib/authors/various/wheel051.html
3. Mooneyham BW, Schooler JW. The costs and benefits of mind-wandering: A review. Canadian Journal of Experimental Psychology. 2013;67(1):11–8.
4. Brewer JA, Worhunsky PD, Gray JR, Tang Y-Y, Weber J, Kober H. Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 2011;108(50):20254–20259.
5. Killingsworth MA, Gilbert DT. A wandering mind is an unhappy mind. Science. 2010;330(6006):932.
6. Mason MF, Norton MI, Van Horn JD, Wegner DM, Grafton ST, Macrae CN. Wandering minds: The default network and stimulus-independent thought. Science. 2007;317(5834):1–7.
7. Sheline YI, Barch DM, Price JL, et al. The default mode network and self-referential processes in depression. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2009;106(6):1942–1947.
8. Kucyi A, Salomons T V, Davis KD. Mind wandering away from pain dynamically engages antinociceptive and default mode brain networks. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2013;110(46):18692–18697.
9. Baars BJ. Spontaneous repetitive thoughts can be adaptive: Postscript on “mind wandering”.Psychological Bulletin. 2010;136(2):208-210.
10. Morewedge CK, Giblin CE, Norton MI. The (perceived) meaning of spontaneous thoughts. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. 2014;143(4):1742–1754.
A very well researched article!
ReplyDeleteI'd like to mention that another spiritual tradition "yoga" is defined as the cessation (nirodha) of the circulations (vṛtti) of the mind (citta) in the beginning of Patañjali's Yoga Sutras. So, somehow quite many of these ancient traditions were convinced that a wandering mind is of no good use, and were even somewhat obsessed with making it stop from doing so!
However, I think, and as you also mention, that since there seems to have been some evolutionary advantage to a wandering mind, to me, the main problem appears to arise from what the Buddha calls "an untamed mind", as you say in your post. This is not just from mind wandering.
Let me explain what I understand by an untamed mind. To me, it is the one which always wanders around. A tamed mind, on the other hand, has some control over itself about when to wander and when to focus. It is here that the vital skill of mindfulness becomes so important. With mindfulness (and clear-comprehension together called sati-sampajañña), a tamed mind is aware of what it is doing, hopefully in a very non judgemental way.
It is sort of like having two parallel channels in the mind. One of the channels either wanders or focuses, while the other is simply aware of what the first is doing. I think you can get glimpses of this on a long meditation retreat or even in daily life, if you have a solid practice. In my experience, this state is very ephemeral. But from what I understand it can be cultivated and sustained with some effort.
It is this quality of monitoring that may be developed in "Right Mindfulness" part of the Noble Eightfold Path of Buddhism. These are the famous Four foundations of mindfulness (Satipaṭṭhānas). I suspect the mindfulness of mind (Cittānupassanā) could be especially helpful, although all four foundations need be developed in tandem for optimal results. Or so I am told :).
And there is the part about switching from the wandering mode to a focussed mode, and, vice versa, depending on the situation. This is perhaps handled by the four-fold aspect of Right Effort which (i) stop the unairsen unwholesome state from arising, (ii) get rid of the already arisen unwholesome state, (iii) cause the unarisen wholesome states to arise and (iv) sustain the arisen wholesome state.
The key point here is that wholesome and unwholesome state could be either mind wandering or focused attention, depending on the context.
In any case, mindfulness seems to the key player in dealing with a wandering mind. It allows one to make an optimal use of it, and at the same time keeping the 'whole mind' tame. It is also the only factor of the seven Awakening Factors (bojjhaṅgā) which does not have an unwholesome aspect to it. The other six need to be balanced with the countervailing factor to avoid their unwholesome qualities.
Moreover, to me at least, the issue is not so much to be mindful as it is to constantly remember to do so. And, what I find most interesting is that the Pali word "sati" translated as mindfulness has deep connotations to memory, remembering and recollecting. The Sanskrit version of sati, smṛti, is still used to mean memory in my native language and some other Indian languages I know.
So my question is: Have you come across any research that relate mind wandering, happiness, productivity, etc., and even the quality of meditation, to different aspects of memory (and not just attention, as it I have seen it's mostly done) like short term memory, recall speed and some other such parameters? I have a feeling there may be something interesting going on there and training memory and recall may help in developing mindfulness, and vice versa.
Great comment. I am not that familiar with yoga teachings, but I would say that understanding of what is mind wandering got diluted over the years and simplified to something bad, something we need to get rid off. I think what Buddha was trying to teach us is that tamed mind is not the one that doesn’t have any mind wandering, but as you say, such mind knows that mind wandering is happening. Mind wandering might become problematic when we have no awareness of it. That is why we need to practice. Meditation helps us to notice the nature of our mind, but by no means should we seek to completely get rid of mind wandering. I think stopping or getting rid of something that is natural for your mind is not what Buddha is teaching us.
ReplyDeleteSciences, as some of the traditions, seem to concentrate on showing how bad mind wandering is. I think this data is a bit biased because simply there are not enough studies done on the benefits of mind wandering and how to harvest them most efficiently. So to answer your question if I come across a study that combines mind wandering, happiness, productivity and the meditation quality into a framework to study the different aspect of memory, no I have not yet. There are studies showing how uncontrolled attention affect performances (Cohen and Maunsell 2011) or that mind wandering can be reduced during cognitive tasks (improve the working memory) by controlling mind wandering with mindfulness (Schooler et al. 2014, p.8), but if training memory would help to train mindfulness I haven't seen anything like that done yet. But it is definitely worth investigating. My wild guess would be that is could be possible. We know many great minds that had no access to mindfulness but we very efficient in switching between diffuse learning and focused learning (for example Einstein) We don’t yet really understand what make the switch from focused mind to wandering mind, so I guess as along as you learn to sort of operate that switch you can become a bit more mindful at least about this nature of your mind.