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W
hen Rachel Stein (not her real name) was a small child,she would pace around in a circle shaking a string orhours at a time, mentally spinning intricate alterna-tive plots or her avorite television shows. Usually shewas the star
—
the imaginary seventh child in
The Bra-dy Bunch,
or example. “Around the age o eight or nine, my olderbrother said, ‘You’re doing this on the ront lawn, and the neighborsare looking at you. You just can’t do it anymore,’ ” Stein recalls. So
24
Scientiic AmericAn mind mah/Ap 2011
she retreated to her bedroom, reveling inher elaborate reveries alone. As she grewolder, the television shows changed
—
rst
General Hospital,
then
The West Wing 
—
but her intense need to immersehersel in her imaginary world did not.“There were periods in my lie whendaydreaming just took over everything,”she recalls. “I was not in control.” Shewould retreat into antasy “any wakingmoment when I could get away with it. Itwas the rst thing I wanted to do when Iwoke up in the morning. When I wokeup in the night to go to the bathroom, itwould be bad i I got caught up in a sto-ry, because then I couldn’t go back tosleep.” By the time she was 17, Stein wasexhausted. “I love the daydreams, but Ijust elt it was consuming my real lie. Iwent to parties with riends, but I justcouldn’t wait to get home. There wasnothing else that I wanted to do as muchas daydreaming.”Convinced that she was crazy, sheconsulted six dierent therapists, none o whom could nd anything wrong withher. The seventh prescribed Prozac, whichhad no eect. Eventually Stein began tak-
Living in aDream World
By Josie Glausiusz
Daydreaming can help solve problems, triggercreativity, and inspire great works o art andscience. When it becomes compulsive, however,the consequences can be dire
   P   H   o   t   o   i   l   l   u   S   t   r   A   t   i   o   n   B   Y   A   A   r   o   n   G   o   o   d   m   A   n
© 2011 Scientific American
 
www.SAa./m Scientiic AmericAn mind
25
© 2011 Scientific American
 
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Scientiic AmericAn mind mah/Ap 2011
ing another antidepressant, Luvox,which, like Prozac, is also a selective se-rotonin reuptake inhibitor but is usuallyprescribed or obsessive-compulsive dis-order. Gradually she brought her day-dreaming under control. Now age 37,she is a successul lawyer, still nervouslyguarding her secret world.The scientic study o people such asStein is helping researchers better under-stand the role o daydreaming in normalconsciousness
—
and what can happenwhen this process becomes unhealthy.For most o us, daydreaming is a virtualworld where we can rehearse the uture,explore earul scenarios or imagine newadventures without risk. It can help us de-vise creative solutions to problems orprompt us, while immersed in one task,with reminders o other important goals.For others, however, the draw o an alter-native reality borders on addiction, chok-ing o other aspects o everyday lie, in-cluding relationships and work. Starringas idealized versions o themselves
—
asroyalty, raconteurs and saviors in a com-plex, ever changing cast o characters
—
addictive daydreamers may eel en-hanced condence and validation. Theirantasies may be ollowed by eelings o dread and shame, and they may comparethe habit to a drug or describe an experi-ence akin to drowning in honey.The recent discovery o a network inthe brain dedicated to autobiographicalmental imagery is helping researchers un-derstand the multiple purposes that day-dreaming serves in our lives. They havedubbed this web o neurons “the deaultnetwork,” because when we are not ab-sorbed in more ocused tasks, the networkres up. The deault network appears tobe essential to generating our sense o sel,suggesting that daydreaming plays a cru-cial role in who we are and how we inte-grate the outside world into our inner lives.Cognitive psychologists are now also ex-amining how brain disease may impairour ability to meander mentally and whatthe consequences are when we just spendtoo much time, well, out to lunch.
Vs  h m’s ey
Most people spend about 30 percento their waking hours spacing out, drit-ing o, lost in thought, woolgathering,in a brown study or building castles inthe air. Yale University emeritus psychol-ogy proessor Jerome L. Singer denesdaydreaming as shiting attention “awayrom some primary physical or mentaltask toward an unolding sequence o private responses” or, more simply,“watching your own mental videos.”The 86-year-old Singer, who published alyrical account o his decades o researchon daydreams in his 1975 book,
The In-ner World of Daydreaming 
(Harper &Row), divides daydreaming styles intotwo main categories: “positive-construc-tive,” which includes upbeat and imagi-native thoughts, and “dysphoric,” whichencompasses visions o ailure or punish-ment. Most people experience both kindsto a small or large degree.Other scientists distinguish betweenmundane musings and extravagant an-tasies. Michael Kane, a cognitive psy-chologist at the University o North Car-olina at Greensboro, considers “mindwandering” to be “any thoughts that areunrelated to one’s task at hand.” In hisview, mind wandering is a broad catego-ry that may include everything rom pon-dering ingredients or a dinner recipe tosaving the planet rom alien invasion.Most o the time when people all intomind wandering, they are thinking abouteveryday concerns, such as recent en-counters and items on their to-do list.More exotic daydreams in the style o  James Thurber’s grandiose ctional an-tasist Walter Mitty
—
such as Mitty’sdream o piloting an eight-engine hydro-plane through a hurricane
—
are rare.Humdrum concerns gured promi-nently in one study that rigorously mea-sured how much time we spend mindwandering in daily lie. In a 2009 studyKane and his colleague Jennier McVayasked 72 U.N.C. students to carryPalmPilots that beeped at random inter-vals eight times a day or a week. Thesubjects then recorded their thoughts atthat moment on a questionnaire. About
FAST FACTS
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nsss hav  h “a wk”
—
a wb ba gs ha b av wh w ay  away h ask a ha   w vs.
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Wh ayag s av a psv,  a v-wh a g, pg ashps a wk.
Most people spend about 30 percent o their waking hoursspacing out, driting o, lost in thought, woolgathering
—
or,as one scientist put it, “watching your own mental videos.”
© 2011 Scientific American
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