Wandering thoughts linked to sharper brains!

'Wandering thoughts linked to sharper brains'

Finally I have some solace! It seems mind wandering actually gives one's working memory a workout, increasing the individual's ability to hold lots of information in the brain, researchers said. Because my mind always wanders and I wondered why all these days. Now I got an explanation from science:
 Often find yourself daydreaming while engaged in some work? Then, you probably have a pretty capable working memory, scientists say.
This mind wandering actually gives one's working memory a workout, increasing the individual's ability to hold lots of information in the brain, researchers said.
Working memory is the mental work space that allows the brain to juggle multiple thoughts simultaneously, and the more working memory a person has, the more daydreaming they can do without forgetting the task at hand, they said.
"Our results suggest that the sorts of planning that people do quite often in daily life -- when they are on the bus, when they are cycling to work, when they are in the shower -- are probably supported by working memory," study author Jonathan Smallwood, of the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Science, said.
"Their brains are trying to allocate resources to the most pressing problems," Smallwood was quoted as saying by LiveScience.
For their study, published in the journal Psychological Science, the researchers studied groups of people from the University of Wisconsin-Madison community, aged 18-65 years.
The first group was asked to perform simple tasks, like pressing a button every time they took a breath or clicking in response to a letter popping up on a computer screen; these tasks were so easy that their minds were likely to wander, the researchers figured.
The researchers also checked in periodically, asking the participants if their minds were on task or wandering. When the task was over, they measured each participant's working memory capacity by having them remember letters while doing math equations.
Though all participants performed well on the task, the researchers noticed that the individuals who indicated their minds had wandered more than others also scored higher on the working memory test."What this study seems to suggest is that, when circumstances for the task aren't very difficult, people who have additional working memory resources deploy them to think about things other than what they're doing," Smallwood said.

--------

A related article:

Some of the most important scientific breakthroughs ever made by scientists including Einstein and Newton came about as the geniuses allowed their minds to wander, researchers say.

(Einstein is believed to have chanced upon the theory of relativity while daydreaming about riding on a sunbeam to the edge of the universe).

Researchers now say that some of the greatest scientific breakthroughs have come when geniuses allowed their minds to wander.According to a new study doing simple tasks that allow us to daydream is key to solving trickier questions playing on our minds, scientists find. The study showed that people who returned to a difficult task after taking a break and doing an easy task boosted their performance by around 40%. However, there was little or no improvement  for people who did another demanding task during the break, used it to rest or did not have a break at all.

So, next time the teacher or boss catches you out for daydreaming, you know what to say!

25