Default Mode Network and the Direct Experience Network

 

TED talk by Karolien Notebaert.  Hack your Own Brain (link)

Default Mode Network and Direct Experience Network.  Only one can be activated at once.

Notebeart asks audience to tap legs with hands, then "feel" (from inside) palms of hands.

The default mode becomes active when our brain assumes that not much is going on and automatically switches our attention to the internal narrative that runs through unfinished business, imaginings, difficulties, or memories that happen to be near the surface. These unintended thoughts are often about the past or future and can be driven by emotions. As soon as we enter one of these streams of thought, we’ve disconnected from the here-and-now reality of direct experience. Our body and senses may be in the present, but our attention is somewhere else.  For example, we could be walking on a beautiful coastal path, but rather than enjoying it, we find that our attention is drawn to a particular unresolved problem that distracts us from the walk.

The direct experience mode is the opposite of the default mode. When the direct experience network is activated in our brain, we are much more aware of our body and senses and experience a more direct connection with the world around us. We are no longer time-traveling in the internal narrative in our heads but connected into the here-and-now of the present moment.  

On the same coastal walk, we notice that our mind has been working through that problem, so switch our attention outwards to our body and senses; to the sound of the waves brushing the shore, the squawk of seagulls overhead, the beautiful, rugged coastline that dips into the sea, and the sun glinting across the water. We feel connected, peaceful and relaxed. The problem may not have gone away, but we feel in a calmer mood to sit down and properly explore a creative solution later that day.

One of the key steps in developing a more mindful approach is to begin noticing the difference between the indirect world of our thoughts and the reality of direct experience.

More scientifically:

The Default Mode Network

The DMN was originally described by Shulman et al. (1997) and subsequently Raichle et al. (2001), who observed that select brain regions experienced increased metabolic activity during rest and decreased activity when engaged in goal-directed (i.e., cognitively demanding) behavior. Several subsequent investigations support the notion that the DMN is normally engaged during internally focused tasks yet is reduced during cognitive demands. Brain regions activated within the DMN include the ventral and dorsal medial prefrontal cortices (BA 24, 10m, 10r, 10p, 32a, 32c, 9), posterior cingulate/retrosplenial cortex (BA 29/30, 23/31), inferior parietal lobule (BA 39, 40), lateral temporal cortex (BA 21), and hippocampal formation.

Evidence suggests that the DMN contributes to the mental exploration of social and emotional content. DMN activity increases during perspective-taking of the desires, beliefs, and intentions of others (i.e., theory of mind), in remembering the past (e.g., autobiographical memory), and in planning the future (Buckner, Andrews-Hanna, & Schacter, 2008). These functions inherently involve the self as a reference point (e.g., one must imagine how events would impact oneself in order to take another's perspective). The self-referential properties of these functions suggest that the DMN may contribute to adaptive behavior by allowing scenarios to be constructed, replayed, and explored in the mind, both to ponder past events and to derive expectations about the future (Buckner et al., 2008). Reduction of activity in the DMN during effortful cognitive processing may reflect the need to reduce the brain's self-referential activity in order to focus on the (external) task at hand (Raichle, 2015).  

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The DMN continues to be active during sleep. DMN activity persists even during light anesthesia (Raichle, 2009). The supporting evidence for the DMN has now been sufficiently well replicated that it is a neuroscience fact.

The main point of interest for this section is that people are totally unaware of the massive amount of unconscious processing that is continuously done by the DMN. To mistake the activities of the DMN for rest demonstrates how far outside of consciousness it operates. No degree of introspection provides any access to the DMN. These findings alone provide sufficient reason to replace the contemporary conscious-centric approach to psychology with an unconscious-centric approach. 

Here's a Mindfulness Scale to test your mindfulness.

What I'm thinking is that the DMN can be turned off by attending to senses or to engaging the brain on a task.... mindfulness can be "non-self-directed engaged brain activity" or "attending to senses."  (These are roughly equivalent in my mind to Ellen Langer's Mindfulness and Buddhist Mindfulness.)