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Daydreaming Brains Are Afire

Posted May 15, 2009 7:42 AM

From Boing Boing:

A new study by University of British Columbia researchers, published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that daydreaming is an extremely active, cognitively complex mental state: "Mind wandering is typically associated with negative things like laziness or inattentiveness," says lead author, Prof. Kalina Christoff, UBC Dept. of Psychology. "But this study shows our brains are very active when we daydream - much more active than when we focus on routine tasks."

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Anonymous Poster
#1

Re: Daydreaming Brains Are Afire

05/15/2009 10:56 AM

I'm enlarging this, printing it out, laminating it and posting it prominently at my desk here at work.

I don't know about the rest of you lot, but I've always hit upon my most brilliant solutions (humble though they were) while either staring off into space at work and NOT thinking about the problem at hand or, alternatively, while I'm happily asleep in bed.

I'm firmly convinced you simply have to "go away" and not bother your brain while it's working. Which, coincidentally, is why I'm writing this right now.

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Guru

Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Germany 49° 26' N, 7° 46' O
Posts: 1950
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#2
In reply to #1

Re: Daydreaming Brains Are Afire

05/16/2009 3:09 AM

You are absolutely right,

if with night time moonlight I am only half asleep

or at daytime thoughts wandering around ,

this is the source of creativity,

interconnect of what you know but you are not aware that these totally different fields may be useful to link.

Very often: you know the solution but you don't know that you know and you don't find the solution in the jungle of your memory without being a bit lazy.

RHABE

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Commentator

Join Date: Aug 2007
Posts: 99
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#3

Re: Daydreaming Brains Are Afire

05/16/2009 11:07 AM

Dreamy Ideas

Have you got a problem to solve? Try sleeping on it.

Our brains appear to continue working on problems even after we have gone to sleep. In a study, one group of people was allowed to sleep for eight hours before tackling a problem that had been described to them. Upon returning to the problem, the sleepers were almost three times as likely as the non-sleepers to find a solution to the problem.

RealAge Benefit: Getting 6 to 8 hours of sleep per night can make your RealAge as much as 3 years younger.

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