Daydreaming: why your conscious mind goes off to wander sometimes

Have you ever read through a bunch of text, only to realise that your mind didn’t actually grasp any of the content matter? Whether you’re dreaming about a special friend or just your next meal, we all go through random moments of blankness or mind-wandering during the day.

It is an extremely common occurrence and now, scientists have come up with a plausible explanation for it. Turns out, when we zone out or go blank, our brain is undergoing a sleep-like activity.

Our attention and concentration vary throughout the day and we spend up to half our waking lives not paying attention to our surroundings or the task at hand, noted the team.

To find out why these lapses happen, the Monash University team monitored people’s brainwaves against their self-reported states of attention. Published in Nature Communications, the study revealed the presence of ‘slow waves’ in the brain, which were similar to the brain waves observed after the onset of sleep.

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This wandering or blanking is involuntary and is more common in people who are sleep-deprived or tired. Interestingly enough, it was found that local sleep can even occur in well-rested individuals.

Finally, the findings maintain that sleep and wakefulness can be intermingled in the human brain. This adds to a recent view of questioning the classical view of sleep as an all-or-nothing phenomenon.

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