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Snap Out of It: Neuroscientists Induce Artificial Daydreaming

Just in case you happen to have a deficit in spacing-out abilities.

​In a bid for ever bigger and more idle mind control, scientists have figured out how to induce daydreaming, according to a paper just published in the j​ournal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

As a devoted starer-out-of-windows who replies to questions with "huh?" far too often, the idea of induced day dreaming seems totally unnecessary to me, and probably to you too. Daydreaming can occupy up to—hey, hey pay attention, over here—​half of ou​r waking lives.

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And, although your geometry teacher was probably right that you should tune in and and learn how to calculate the area of this circle, it increasingly looks like daydreaming is actually pretty​ valuable. Letting the mind wander is believed to help us plan for the future, solve personal problems, make decisions, be more creative, and even learn new things, like how to calculate the area of circles. That's one reason why hands are w​rung over smartphones eliminating the moments when daydreaming can occur.

In an effort to better understand where in the brain that day-dreaming takes place, and whether it's something that could be induced by outside forces, researchers from Bar Ilan University and University College London had to get some people good and bored.

So, they sat 47 test subjects down, and had them perform the old "Sustained Attention to Response Task" (SART). It goes like this: Hit the spacebar on this keyboard every time a number that appears on the screen isn't a three, for 40 minutes, while occasionally asking them "so, whatcha thinkin' about?"

As the subjects tapped away, the researchers found they could enhance mind-wandering by electrically stimulating the prefrontal cortex region of the brain. So, not only did this affirm to the researchers that daydreaming could be induced externally, it told them at least partially where daydreaming starts.

Also, weirdly enough, as researchers stimulated daydreaming, people got better at the task of not tapping when they see the number three. Studies have​ shown that stimulating the brain can help with things like learning math, so more research will have to be done to determine what's at play here. And before you start licking batteries, please note that other studies have also found a downside to shocking yo​ur brain too much so, you know, be careful. Or maybe just help yourself to some staring out the window instead.