Media release

From: Society for Neuroscience

Letting your mind wander can sometimes improve learning

When performing a task that doesn’t require much attention, people who let their minds wander display sleep-like brain activity that is linked to better performance.  

When people let their minds wander during tasks that require attention and active thinking, it can hurt how well they learn and perform the tasks. But there are more passive kinds of learning that require less attention. Péter Simor, from Eötvös Loránd University, and colleagues explored how mind wandering influences learning in tasks requiring little attention.  

Nearly 40 study participants performed a simple learning task while the researchers recorded their brain activity. This simple task was used because participants could make predictions based off probabilities that they learned without awareness. Mind wandering while doing the task did not worsen performance, and in some cases even enhanced learning. Spontaneous mind wandering was more beneficial to learning than deliberate mind wandering. During mind wandering and improvements in task learning, oscillatory neural activity in the cortex, resembling the brain activity that occurs during sleep or sleep-like states, occurred. Thus, sleep-like neural activity linked to spontaneous mind wandering promotes learning in tasks that require minimal attention. “Most cognitive work looks at learning when you are fully engaged. But in real life we spend so much time passively learning! As our brain needs sleep, maybe we also need passive ways of learning, or ‘wakeful rest,’ to recover from tasks that require your brain to be online and engaged,” says Simor.