Your Default Mode Network (DMN) is a road trip playlist curated by your subconscious—one minute it’s a nostalgic bop, the next it’s that song you can’t stand, but can’t skip.
The DMN is the detour you didn’t expect, but sometimes leads to cool adventures and amazing sites. Our Default Mode Network may sometimes wander aimlessly, but that mind wandering also can be a time for creative exploration and problem solving.
Understand Your Brain’s Resting State
When we aren’t doing anything that demands our focused attention, the Default Mode Network takes the driver’s seat and hits shuffle on the entertainment dashboard.
Researchers have identified four areas of the brain that activate when a person isn’t performing a specific, externally driven task. They are the dorsomedial and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, anterior and posterior cingulate cortex, lateral parietal cortex, and the precuneus. These regions play a role in emotion, personality, introspection, and memory.
The DMN is important in three areas:
- Self-representation. The way we see ourselves, including our traits and dispositions.
- Theory of Mind (ToM). Our attempt to figure out the intentions of other people.
- Simulations. Led by the question, “What if?”, the DMN runs a variety of scenarios.
Our brain likes to be busy—even in resting awake states, like daydreaming, mind wandering, meditation, and some mindfulness activities.
Mind wandering and daydreaming aren’t necessarily dependent on a particular outside (external) stimulus and are typically unrelated to a specific task. Both experiences also can be intentional or unintentional. Some researchers use mind wandering and daydreaming interchangeably. We’re not doing that. So, what’s the difference?
Mind wandering is broader and described as “task unrelated thought.” It can be deliberate or spontaneous, with the former more often associated with positive thoughts, and the latter with negative thoughts (Barnett & Kaufman, 2020).
Researchers also consider the plausibility of the mind wandering. Does it relate to a real-life situation about which running simulations in your mind helps you plan, prepare, and problem-solve? Are those events happening now or in the immediate future? Barnett and Kaufman (2020) view mind-wandering on a spectrum, with one end reflecting thoughts that are closer to real life and the opposite end being “impossibly fanciful.”
When mind wandering involves scenarios that aren’t realistic, i.e., the likelihood of their occurring is highly unlikely or near zero, then we’re daydreaming. For example, maybe you’re daydreaming about what it would be like to be an eagle or travel to Mars. The first is fantastical, but the second is possible, though remote.
Daydreaming is future-oriented and often deliberate. When it leans more toward fantastical imaginings that disrupt your day, then it’s considered maladaptive.
With our better understanding of the DMN, we can use its strengths to our advantage.
DMN Action Steps
- Use a mood tracking app to notice correlations between mental states and DMN activity.
- Identify which activities (e.g., walking, showering) enhance your insights.
Reframe the Default Mode Network
The Default Mode Network is about our inner world — how we see ourselves and how we assess our social world as it relates to us. We can choose to reflect on its musings, positive and negative, so we can become the best versions of ourselves. We also can delve into those negative thoughts, evaluate their truthfulness and accuracy, then purposely reframe them in a more positive way.
Reframing is looking at a problem or a challenging situation from a more constructive perspective. For example, in April 2025, the stock market plummeted. If you had money in retirement or self-directed investment accounts, you might have experienced anxiety and panic watching the value of your portfolios drop.
Your anxious thoughts might have scolded you for selling, not selling, not buying the dip, buying the dip, borrowing to buy the dip, or not putting your money into something safer. As you kept a close eye on the news, your thoughts might have shouted, “You’re going to lose everything! You’re an idiot!”
But are those thoughts true? Are your emotions and feelings taking over?
The value of stocks always goes up and down, sometimes dramatically, other times slothlike. Either way, it’s out of your control. If you want to continue investing, reframing the highs and lows of investing is an important skill. Reframing looks like, “Stocks are on sale now!” (I’m not suggesting you borrow to buy the dip, though.)
Reframing is powerful. You can use it to change any negative thought.
DMN Action Steps
- Track your DMN activity for 1 -2 days. Are your thoughts negative or positive? When are they happening? Is there a time of day when your thoughts are more positive than negative?
- Keep a journal to track insights or creative ideas that come during downtime.
- Practice mindfulness meditation for 5–15 minutes daily. Start small.
- Schedule quiet, tech-free moments to allow your mind to wander naturally.
- Use reflective questions like, “What patterns of thought keep resurfacing?”
- Go outside. Bonus points if you can do this for a few minutes in the morning. Morning light exposure helps reset your internal clock. This helps you sleep better!
Harness the Power of Visualization
Most people can create mental images. In fact, only 2 – 4% of people experience aphantasia (the brain doesn’t create pictures) and this inability isn’t a disability, medical, or mental health condition. It’s simply a difference in how a person’s brain works.
Some people construct vivid images, noting even minute details. Others think more broadly. Wherever you land on the continuum, you can use visualization to harness your creative spirit and move in a consistently positive direction.
While you can practice visualization anywhere, when you’re just getting started, it’s a good idea to find a quiet spot. Position yourself comfortably. Then,
- Choose an object in your environment. Examine it for 1 -2 minutes.
- Close your eyes or soften your gaze. If softening your gaze, then turn away from the object.
- Use belly breathing to ready your mind. Inhale through your nose, allowing your belly to fill with air. Let this breath flow into your chest without raising your shoulders. You can track this by resting one hand on your stomach and the other on your chest. Exhale through your pursed lips or your nose. If it helps you, count in for four and out for four.
- Recall as many details about the object as possible. What shape is it? What colors? What’s its size? Does it have a scent? Is its surface soft, rough, hard?
Practicing visualization in this way several times each week will improve your ability to create mental pictures. Before long, you’ll be able to use visualization to “see” every step in any goal you want to accomplish. Visualizing the process is as important, if not more important than, “seeing” the end goal.
As your visualization skills strengthen, you can choose to use a first or third person perspective. Which one is better? To gain more insight into this, think about a work of fiction you’ve read. What drew you into the story? Was it written in first or third person? These usually are the dominant choices in fiction writing.
Books written in first person, particularly ones written in first person present tense, give readers a sense of being part of the action. Readers discover and experience everything in the story simultaneously with the main character. This also happens in first person, past tense, but not to the same degree. Present tense is the critical piece.
Third person is about observation. As readers, we’re on the outside watching the characters do clever, baffling, annoying, and sometimes foolish things. We don’t feel the same sense of control, emotion, or feelings.
This isn’t how we want to engage in our visualization activities. We’re not meant to be outside observers of our lives. We’re meant to be involved in the thick of it!
DMN Action Steps
- Gradually increase the time you spend visualizing.
- Create a vision board or digital collage to solidify your mental imagery.
- Revisit your visualization practice weekly to reinforce positive thinking.
Manage Default Mode Network Overactivity
It’s three a.m. Your eyes pop open. Thoughts scramble, each worse than the last. You’re spiraling. Worry sets into your spine. Something’s different this time, though. Now, you know it’s your default mode network in action. Maybe you’ve given your DMN a name (helpful), but controlling it still isn’t automatic.
Like any new skill, we have to engage in deliberate practice to reap the rewards. Crafting a memorable line of dialogue, a witty joke, an efficient piece of code, whatever the skill, repetition is the key. There’s no failure because each opportunity gives us insights. We learn bit by bit, tweak by tweak. Eventually, the behaviors necessary to complete our task automatize.
DMN Action Steps
- Recognize signs of rumination or overthinking.
- Use grounding techniques like deep breathing or body scanning.
- Consider cognitive-behavioral strategies. For example, journaling, distraction, or self-compassion to redirect unproductive thought loops.
- Can’t sleep? Mind racing? Practice cognitive shuffling.
- Read Fundamental Forward Shift: The key to Sustainable Growth and learn how small, positively skewed, consistent actions and thoughts control the default mode network.
The next time your thoughts wander and your DMN shuffles to a song you’d rather skip, remember you’re in the driver’s seat. You choose the adventure.
References
- Galinato, M. (2022 Aug 30). Rest: The Default Mode Network. BrainFacts.org. Retrieved Ap. 4, 2024.
- Menon, V. (2023). 20 years of the default mode network: A review and synthesis. Neuron, 111(16) DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2023.04.023
- Barnett, P. J., & Kaufman, J. C. (2020). Mind wandering: Framework of a lexicon and musings on creativity In D. D. Preiss, D. Cosmelli, & J. C. Kaufman (Eds.), Creativity and the wandering mind: Spontaneous and controlled cognition (pp. 3-24).San Diego: Academic Press.
- Marks, T. (10 Feb 2021). Maladaptive daydreaming vs. Mind Wandering: How to tell the difference. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Qt-8WxxdTPQ
- Huberman, A. (24 Jan 2023). Using light for health. Huberman Lab. Retrieved April 11, 2024 from https://www.hubermanlab.com/newsletter/using-light-for-health
- Cleveland Clinic (31 Aug 2023). Aphantasia: What it is, causes, symptoms, and treatments. Retrieved April 29, 2025 from https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/symptoms/25222-aphantasia
- Cleveland Clinic (30 March 2022). Diaphragmatic breathing exercises and benefits. Retrieved April 29, 2025 from https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/articles/9445-diaphragmatic-breathing
- Calm (n.d.). How cognitive shuffling can quiet racing thoughts at bedtime. Retrieved April 30, 2025 from https://www.calm.com/blog/cognitive-shuffling