Mind-Wandering

Mind-wandering is broadly defined as thinking that is unrelated to a current task and independent of what is happening around a person, commonly experienced as thoughts that will not stay on one topic for long, especially during an attention-demanding task, and it takes forms that have been grouped into positive constructive daydreaming, a guilty fear of failure, and poor attentional control. It occurs often while driving, since driving under ordinary conditions becomes close to automatic and needs little of the brain task-positive network, and under low vigilance a person may afterward not remember what happened around them because attention was absorbed by their own thoughts, a pattern called the decoupling hypothesis; studies using event-related potentials find that mind-wandering reduces how fully the brain processes information from the outside world. It appears to function as both a stable personal trait and a passing state, has been linked to performance problems in the lab and in daily life including possible car accidents, occurs more often in people with a low or depressed mood, and can also occur under the influence of alcohol; people tend toward more future-directed than past-directed thoughts while mind-wandering, and it is thought to involve the brain default mode network, though that link has more recently been challenged.