Daydream Your Way to Smarter Learning

It seems almost impossible for people to be bored these days.  Everywhere you look, people are staring at their smartphone screens whenever they find themselves with more than a few seconds to spare.

New research published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggests we should put our phones down as it finds that letting our minds drift into a daydream actually helpsyour brain to learn.

Drawing inspiration from studies on local sleep, where certain brain regions seem to briefly nap while the rest of us stays awake, the researchers theorised that daydreaming could reflect a brain state similar to sleep, allowing it to consolidate information and form memories more efficiently.

To put this to the test, the researchers asked volunteers to perform a probabilistic learning task that involved detecting patterns and learning without conscious effort. As the participants worked, their brain activity was monitored using high-density EEG (electroencephalography).

After the task, participants self-reported how focused they had been. The results were surprising: those who admitted to letting their minds drift off showed improved learning, especially in the early stages of the task. Not only did they perform just as well as the fully focused group, but their brain activity revealed signs of a sleep-like state, without them ever closing their eyes.

The researchers suggest that mind wandering might allow the brain to shift into a mode where automatic, associative learning takes over, similar to how we absorb information while dreaming.

In this state, the brain isn’t focused on immediate, conscious problem-

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
You're listening to the Sunday Session podcast with Francesca Rudgin
from News Talks.

Speaker 2 (00:11):
EDB with her science study of the week. I'm joined
by doctor Micheldeck and think, good morning.

Speaker 3 (00:16):
Good morning.

Speaker 2 (00:16):
I love a daydream.

Speaker 3 (00:17):
I love science that says that you can be lazy
for it. As soon as I saw this, I'm like,
this is right up my street. Because as a kid
you were told off of staring at the window and daydream.
It's always been a negative. But no science now says
it's cool.

Speaker 2 (00:29):
I can sit and look at the ocean and daydream.
That's my hippie place, just sit and look at water.

Speaker 3 (00:34):
So if you need the evidence for your boss, or
your teacher general, or your family or your family, Journal
of Neuroscience is where the paper is. And it's really interesting.
I've run in a couple of situations this week where
I've had to sit for periods of time. My son
was in hospital and I was in a waiting room
for seven hours and I looked around. Nobody seems to
be able to be bored anymore. The second people sit,

(00:57):
all they do is pull their phone right out and
instantly are trying to do something on their phone. And
back in the olden days, before we had these smartphones,
we used to just sit and stare at the walls. Well,
let's go back to the olden days, because it's actually
very good for you let your minds drift into a
daydream because apparently it helps your brain to learn. And
this has been inspired by a whole bunch of previous research.

(01:18):
It talks about local sleep, and local sleep is where
certain parts of your brain can briefly take a nap
while you are still awake because you're not using them,
and it just allows your brain to process and figure
out what it's done today and sort of store their information.
And so these scientists said, well, let's take that theory
and figure out if daydreaming could actually reflect this brain

(01:40):
sleep brain state that dissimilar to sleep. So what they
did is they took some volunteers and they made them
do these sort of boring statistical probability tests. And these
people didn't really know that they were doing these tests
in a way that they were being assessed. They were
just told that it's computer blah blah blah do this thing.
And they put an eg on their head that monitored
their brain, looked at what parts of their brain were

(02:01):
active what they were doing, and at the end of it,
they were like, Okay, be honest, how is focus during
that very boring activity? And a whole bunch of them
were like, man, it was so boring. I sort of
like daydreamed and was looking out the window while I
was doing it, and blah blah blah, and the other
was like, no, I was so focused. I was doing
it so well, like I knew I had to complete
this test. And what they found is that those who

(02:22):
admitted that they let their minds drift and had a
bit of a daydream, they actually showed improved learning. And
so they not only just performed as well as the
focus group, but when you looked at their eg their
brain activity showed signs of a sleep like state. Although
their eyes were wide open as they were daydreaming, that
part of their brain was sort of processing the thing

(02:44):
they were supposed to be doing, but it wasn't a
hard task and shut down and allowed it to learn.
At the end of it, these guys did better in
the test. And so what this research and is a
growing bit of research around this, it challenges the idea
that focus always equates to better learning because we spoke.
We're told them school, you pay attention, focus, don't daydream.

(03:04):
But actually, what it says is that our brain is
all always working, even if we're slightly checked out. And
so if you're in a situation where something important doesn't happened. Now,
if you're in a meeting at work, don't do this.
If you need to be focused, focused, But if you're
like folding the laundry or waiting at a bus stop
or doing those things, don't pick up your phone. Just

(03:24):
put it down. Let your brain do what it needs
to do, and in the long term, it's gonna help
you think there and learn more.

Speaker 2 (03:31):
This all reminds me of a book I read a
few years ago. It's called Rest, and it's all about
that idea that we can actually be a lot more
creative and product productive if we actually learn to play
and stop and rest and things they talk about all
the writers and you know, and and.

Speaker 3 (03:46):
So that's why your best ideas come in the shower.

Speaker 2 (03:48):
Thinkers and painters and everybody like that. It's very very
good at just stopping and resting. Thank you so much, Michelle.

Speaker 3 (03:53):
Day dream to stare out the window.

Speaker 2 (03:55):
I'll attempt to sort of stay slightly focused until twelve,
and then I'll do Then I shall thank you so much.

Speaker 1 (04:02):
For more from the Sunday session with Francesca Rudgin, listen
lived US Talk to Be from nine am Sunday, or
follow the podcast on iHeartRadio