Official News page 7

REAL LIFE NEWS: DAYDREAM BELIEVER

by Hazed

A few weeks back I told you the doodling was a good and productive thing to do in a meeting. Now it turns out that daydreaming is a vital part of solving complex problems. So when you're sitting staring vacantly into space not paying attention to anything that goes on around you, you're not just being bone idle, but you're engaged in important cognitive tasks.

Scientists at the University of British Columbia Psychology department showed that during daydreaming, our brains are very active - much more so than when we focus on routine tasks. They proved this by sticking their subjects into an fMRI scanner where they performed the simple routine task of pushing a button when numbers appear on a screen. The researchers tracked their attentiveness moment-to-moment using brain scans, subjective reports and by tracking their performance on the task.

They discovered that daydreaming is an important cognitive state where "we may unconsciously turn out attention from immediate tasks to sort through important problems in our lives."

You can read the details here.

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