Default mode network
The default mode network is a set of brain regions that scans find more active when we are not focused on the outside world, for example when we remember, imagine what's coming, think about ourselves or wonder what another person is thinking. The main parts are the medial prefrontal cortex, a strip along the middle of the front of the brain behind the forehead, and the posterior cingulate cortex, deep in the middle toward the back. Parts of the parietal lobe, at the upper back of the brain, and of the temporal lobe, at the sides and underneath, belong to it too, including temporal areas that help with memory. Researchers also call it the DMN or the default network.
Standing in the shower with nothing to do, we find that for three minutes we have been going back over a conversation from yesterday, and then planning Friday, and we can't remember whether we washed our hair.
It isn't a test for depression or rumination. The depression findings are averages across groups of people. Nothing in them is a way to tell whether one person is depressed or ruminating.
How it shows
At work
Attention slipping from a routine task, such as filing or driving, to yesterday's meeting or tomorrow's list. Studies have linked this sort of drift with the network, which is also active in other kinds of mental work.
In close relationships
Replaying what someone said, or wondering what they meant and what they think of us. Imagining other people's views is one of the kinds of thinking the network has been tied to.
In ourselves
An idle minute that fills with memories, plans and thoughts about ourselves. People are often unaware that their minds have wandered, so noticing it afterward may catch only part of it.
How it differs from similar ideas
Mind-wandering
Mind-wandering is an experience people report: thoughts drifting away from what is in front of them. The default mode network is a set of brain regions seen in scans. Studies have tied the two together, and the network has also been found active in tasks where people were thinking about the task, so they aren't the same thing.
Rumination and worry
Rumination is repetitive thinking that goes over distress again and again. A review of studies in depression suggests it goes with how the network is linked to one frontal region of the brain, rather than with the network being overactive by itself.
Narrative self and minimal self
Narrative and minimal self describe two ways of understanding what a self is: the story we tell about our lives, and the bare sense of being the one who has experiences. The network is a set of brain regions studied during self-related thought, and none of the studies here shows that it carries either one.
Dual-process thinking
Dual-process thinking sorts thought into a fast, automatic kind and a slow, effortful kind. The default mode network is defined by where activity rises in scans, so it doesn't line up with that split. Slow, effortful thinking about the past or the future could involve it.
What it doesn’t mean
It doesn't mean there is an “ego network.” The network is active during thinking about ourselves, and also during remembering, imagining the future and thinking about other people. Nothing in the studies on this page shows that it holds a self or an ego.
It doesn't mean a quieter network is a calmer or wiser mind. In one study, experienced meditators showed lower activity in two main parts of the network during meditation. That is a difference between two groups. It was not shown to be a route to peace, and the network also takes part in planning and in understanding other people.
It doesn't mean the network switches off whenever we are busy. Early accounts called it “task-negative,” active at rest and less active during tasks. A 2018 study found it also took part in tasks, in the detail of what people were thinking while they held information in mind.
An example: Dana in the shower, and what one morning can't show
Dana is 41 and gets ready for work at the same time every day. She has no meeting until ten, and nothing is asked of her while the water runs.
- 6:40 a.m. Dana turns on the shower. Within seconds she is back in yesterday's meeting, hearing again what her manager said about the budget.
- A minute later She wonders what he meant by “let's circle back,” and whether she sounded defensive when she answered.
- Two minutes in Her mind jumps to Friday: the flight, the packing, what she will say to her sister about the house.
- The shampoo A car horn sounds in the street, and the bathroom comes back. She can't remember whether she has already washed her hair.
In four minutes with nothing to do, Dana's thoughts went to a memory, to a worry about what someone thinks of her, to a plan and then back to the room.
Those are the kinds of thinking that researchers have tied to the default mode network: remembering, imagining the future, thinking about ourselves and thinking about what other people think. In a lab, people lie in a scanner while doing little, or while doing an easy task, and the network tends to light up more than during a hard one.
A single moment can't show what a brain is doing, though. Nothing here says Dana's network was active, or that it was involved in any of those thoughts. The studies below use many people, many minutes and a comparison, and even then they find averages. The same kinds of thought can also arise while a person is busy, which is one reason the idea of a network that only switches on at rest has been questioned.
What the research shows
Scans reliably show the network. What it does is less settled. The four studies below cover a link with mind-wandering, a challenge to the label “task-negative,” a small study of meditators and a review of depression research. The meditation and depression findings are early and come from small samples.
Scans find a network that is more active when attention turns inward, and one study tied it to mind-wandering. A later study found it taking part in tasks as well. The meditation result comes from two groups of 12, and the depression result comes from a review that calls its own model a proposal.
Volunteers' minds wandered more during practiced tasks, and the network was more active then
Malia Mason and colleagues, in 2007, had volunteers practice memory tasks over four days until the tasks needed little thought. On day four, the volunteers were asked at intervals what they had been thinking. Thoughts unrelated to what was in front of them, which the authors call stimulus-independent thought, were reported more often during practiced tasks than during new ones, at an average of 32 percent of sampled thoughts against 22 percent.
On day five, in a brain scanner, the regions that were more active at rest than during the tasks, the default network, were also more active during practiced than new tasks. Volunteers who scored higher on a daydreaming questionnaire showed a larger rise in several of these regions. The authors concluded that mind-wandering goes with activity in the network.
Doesn’t show A small group, under 20 people by the paper's own statistics. Thoughts were sampled on day four and the scan came a day later, so the brain activity was matched to the kind of task and not to individual drifting thoughts. The authors say the daydreaming scale may measure awareness of drifting rather than how often it happens, and that the network likely serves several functions.
The network took part in tasks too, and went with how detailed people's thoughts were
A 2018 study by Sormaz and colleagues at the University of York scanned 30 people, after excluding four of the 34 who were scanned, while they did an easier shape task or a harder one that needed holding the previous trial in mind. At intervals, a set of questions asked what they had just been thinking, including how detailed the thought was and how closely it related to the task.
The authors reported that their results were inconsistent with a task-negative view of the network. Whether a person's thoughts were on or off the task showed up in regions near the brain's movement areas. Detail in thought went with activity patterns in the network during the harder task, while people held information in mind.
Doesn’t show Thirty people doing one kind of task in a scanner, with thoughts reported at intervals in answer to set questions. It argues that the network does more than off-task thinking, and doesn't say what the network is for.
Experienced meditators showed lower activity in two main parts of the network during meditation
Judson Brewer and colleagues, in 2011, scanned 12 people with more than ten years of mindfulness meditation practice, about 10,500 hours on average, and 12 people who had never meditated, matched on age, sex, education and similar traits. Both groups did three kinds of guided meditation: following the breath, directing kind wishes toward others and noticing whatever came into awareness.
In the experienced meditators, the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, the network's two main parts, were relatively less active in all three kinds. Their posterior cingulate was also more closely coordinated, in the sense that activity rose and fell together, with two regions linked to self-monitoring and control, both at rest and during meditation. The authors read this as consistent with less mind-wandering.
Doesn’t show A comparison of two groups at one point in time, with 12 people each, so it can't show that meditation caused the difference. People who keep meditating for a decade may differ from other people to begin with, and no beginners were trained and scanned again. The authors call the sample moderately small, say that this raises the chance of inflated findings and ask for replication. Mind-wandering was not tracked moment by moment, and they add that meditators may differ in how aware they are of their minds wandering.
In depression studies, the network was more tightly linked to one frontal region, though it didn't look overactive itself
A 2015 review by J. Paul Hamilton, Madison Farmer, Phoebe Fogelman and Ian Gotlib covered research on the network in major depression. They pooled seven brain-imaging studies that compared current depression with none, six from the literature and one from their own lab with 17 unmedicated depressed people and 17 matched comparison people. The measure was functional connectivity, which means how much activity in different regions rises and falls together.
Depressed groups reliably showed stronger connectivity between the network and the subgenual prefrontal cortex, a frontal region the authors link to mood and withdrawal. In at least two studies, stronger connection went with more rumination. Yet across 18 studies of resting blood flow, no region of the network differed reliably between depressed and comparison groups. The authors suggest the network need not be overactive in depression and that the pairing with the frontal region may matter more.
Doesn’t show A review built on a small number of studies, and its model is a proposal the authors did not test directly. Connectivity shows activity moving together, and the authors say what it means for how the brain computes is still not well understood. It can't show that the connection causes rumination, and the findings are group averages.
Try it: an idle minute
Take one minute with nothing asked of you, such as waiting for a kettle. Afterward, write three short notes.
- Where my thoughts went in that minute, in plain words
- Whether they were about the past, the future, me or someone else
- What pulled me back to the room, if anything did
Over several days, the notes may show what kind of thinking tends to fill idle minutes. They describe what we noticed and can't say what was happening in any part of the brain. People are also often unaware of their own drifting, so the notes catch only the part we noticed.
What is the default mode network?
A set of brain regions that scans find more active when people are not focused on the outside world. Its main parts are the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex and parts of the parietal and temporal lobes. The phrase “default mode” comes from a 2001 paper by Marcus Raichle and colleagues.
What does the default mode network do?
A 2008 review found it active during remembering, imagining the future and thinking about other people's perspectives, and described it as several interacting parts. What it is for is still debated. A 2018 study found it taking part in tasks that needed information held in mind, which a purely “task-negative” view doesn't predict.
Is the default mode network the same as mind-wandering?
Mind-wandering is the experience of thoughts drifting from what we are doing, and the network is a set of brain regions. In a 2007 study, drifting thoughts and activity in the network rose together during practiced tasks. The study didn't catch individual thoughts in the scanner, and later work found the network active in tasks too.
What is the link between the default mode network and meditation?
One 2011 study compared 12 experienced meditators with 12 people who had never meditated and found lower activity in two main parts of the network during meditation. Because the two groups were compared at one point in time with a small sample, the study can't show that meditation caused the difference, and its authors ask for replication.
What is the link between the default mode network and depression or rumination?
A 2015 review pooled seven studies and found stronger connectivity between the network and a frontal region called the subgenual prefrontal cortex in depression, which in at least two studies went with more rumination. Resting blood flow in the network itself didn't differ reliably. The findings are group averages and can't tell us about one person.
How do you quiet the default mode network?
We don't have an answer to that. The study that found lower activity in experienced meditators compared groups and didn't test a way to get there. Nothing in these studies shows that lower activity means peace, and the network takes part in memory, planning and understanding other people, so less activity isn't plainly a goal.
Where the idea comes from
The idea began with an odd finding. In 1997, Gordon Shulman and colleagues, including Marcus Raichle, reanalyzed nine earlier brain-scanning studies that used positron emission tomography, or PET, a scan that tracks blood flow in the brain. Across them, the same regions tended to show less blood flow while people did an active task than while they looked passively at the same display.
Four years later, Raichle and colleagues at Washington University in St. Louis measured what share of the oxygen delivered by the blood the awake, resting brain uses, found it nearly the same across the brain and argued that rest is a baseline. They proposed that the regions that grow less active during tasks belong to “an organized, baseline default mode of brain function” that is suspended when we pursue a goal. The name “default mode” comes from that paper.
In 2008, Randy Buckner, Jessica Andrews-Hanna and Daniel Schacter reviewed thirty years of imaging and called the system the default network. They described it as active during autobiographical memory, imagining the future and thinking about other people's perspectives, and as made of several interacting parts rather than one block. Some researchers also called it the “task-negative network,” a label that later studies have challenged.
The question it adds
When the mind drifts, this idea asks where it went.
In the last idle minute, was my mind on the past, the future, myself or someone else?
Gordon Shulman and colleagues, 1997, then Marcus Raichle and colleagues, 2001, who named a default mode of brain function
Questions to carry
- In my last idle minute, where did my thoughts go: the past, the future, myself or someone else?
- When I catch my mind drifting, what was it doing just before I noticed?
Related
dmn, brain at rest, resting brain, brain when doing nothing, ego network, brain and daydreaming, brain and rumination, meditation and the brain, what the brain does when idle, neuroscience of self, brain on autopilot, quiet the mind
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