Do you get your best ideas in the shower?
Or do you scrabble to record frantic voice notes while driving out of fear you’ll forget that lightbulb moment?
This week, I learned that this is actually a known psychological phenomenon.
Default Mode Network (DMN) is when your brain is awake but at rest. You are not focused on any outside activity; perhaps you are doing something passive or routine, like walking or going to the loo. DMN kicks in when your mind is allowed to wander.
This is when your brain is creative, it’s allowed to explore new ideas and solutions. You likely don’t even remember what you were doing when this activates, like when you forget your whole journey despite arriving safely at home.
The default mode network, discovered by neurologist Marcus Raichle, spans a number of brain regions, incorporating parts of the prefrontal, parietal, and temporal cortices that show joint activation, or deactivation, in connection with particular mental functions. It is one of a number of such brain networks, which also include the salience network and the executive control network. - Psychology Today.
So, why I am suddenly going all armchair psychologist on you?
Learning about this neurological process has got me thinking about the impact that our digital addiction has had on this part of our brains since we are less likely to enter this state when there’s a screen calling our names.
Screentime is directly linked to our reward cycle. Social media and other digital experiences are literally built to hold our attention for as long as possible, and part of this is ensuring we are rewarded for our time, be that through the self-affirmation of ‘likes’ or the gamification of online shopping experiences.
So, given that the Default Mode Network kicks in when our brains are absent of stimulus, how what does that mean for us living in a time where we are never not stimulated?
Mariah Olson put this way better than I could in her piece Bailing on Boredom on Medium:
Because the DMN functions when we are alone with our thoughts and my previous research demonstrated that people don’t like being alone with their thoughts, I hypothesized that DMN activity is like homework for our brain — it’s necessary, but also (by definition) not stimulating. High connectivity in the DMN is also correlated with depression and rumination, another reason why we may naturally avoid this state of mind.
Reading this was a bit of a lightbulb moment for me, because it backs the theory I was already pondering about whether we are actively avoiding this state of mind through our addiction to technology? And how long before we start to see this taking an impact our our mental health?
To be honest, we are probably already there.
We already know that our attention spans are shorter than ever. One study by King’s College London found that not only do people significantly underestimate how often they check their phones, but they are also physically unable to not check their devices while focusing on other things.
If we can’t focus on parenting or working without checking our phones, how are we ever going to gain the benefits of an active Default Mode Network? No wonder all of my best ideas come to me when I’m driving down the A19, because there is probably no other moment in the day when I am not doing three things at once.
It’s like a dam breaking under the pressure of a torrential downpour. If the thoughts keep on coming, and we don’t give them space, they will leak out at the least convenient of times.
I also wanted to quickly circle back to the suggestion Mariah made about how we keep busy so as to avoid being ‘alone with our thoughts’. It seems ironic to me that we do everything we can to avoid the DMN so as to not ruminate, but then so many of us can’t get to sleep at night due to a slew of doom-and-gloom thoughts.
My thoughts (as someone completely unqualified to make such hypotheses) are that if we don’t make time for our brains to do what they need to do, then it will simply force us to. It’s a bit like how people often get ill on the first day of their holidays - because it comes after a period of high cortisol levels, which is directly linked to a lower immune system.
I wonder if I give my brain space to do what it needs to do, will it reward me in return?
By removing digital distractions, and giving my brain time to process thoughts, will I stop falling into a doom pit before bed? Or waking up with anxious sweats? Even better, will I start to get better creative ideas as these pathways are allowed to connect more frequently without the necessity for reward?
Over the next few weeks, I am going to experiment with this. I will leave my phone in another room, check myself when scrolling around my toddler, and maybe set some usage restrictions on my phone. Let me know in the comments below if you have ever done anything like this before or if you have any thoughts on the waging war between screentime addiction and our brains’ natural processes. I’d love to hear from you.
Here are a few things I’ve enjoyed this week:
📚 I Hope This Finds You Well by Natalie Sue - A fun debut novel that will likely strike a chord with anyone who has experienced toxic office culture.
📚 Private Rites by Julia Armfield - From the author of one of my favourite books of recent years, Our Wives Under The Sea, this novel is dripping with existential dread. Set during a climate crisis in a not-too-distant future, three sisters come together following the death of their estranged father, who was a famous architect preparing for the end-of-times. I think I preferred Armfield’s first novel, but this was still a fantastic read. Her prose is so beautiful, I don’t think there's any other author out there writing like her.
📽️ Longlegs (In Theatres Now) - We went to see this much-anticipated horror starring Maika Monroe and Nic Cage at the cinema last week, and we weren’t disappointed. I don’t often find myself feeling truly scared by a film, but this one got me good.
📽️ Past Lives (Netflix) - I’m late to this one, but I finally watched one of the most highly acclaimed films of 2023. I really loved this, and I think I need to watch it again to fully experience the subtleties of the cultural nuances.
🎧I’m on Spotify!
If you like the audio version of this newsletter, you can listen to them all over on Spotify. Here’s last week’s:
💌 About this email
I’m Ellen, and I write about mental health for the chronically online. I am a freelance copywriter, strategist and web designer, and I work from home with my husband, Craig, at Content By The Sea. We have two rescue greyhounds, Potter and Harmony, and a toddler.
I started this newsletter in March 2020 and have sent over 170 emails; currently, I have over 1,200 subscribers. I write about a wide variety of topics, including diet culture, my love of running, jealousy, my life falling apart, mam guilt, and this dystopian world we all live in.
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