The Importance of Daydreaming and Its Link to Psychedelics

Exploring the Neuroscience of Mind-Wandering and Altered States of Consciousness

Introduction: The Maligned Art of Mental Wandering

For decades, daydreaming has been dismissed as mental laziness—a distraction from productivity, a sign of inattention, or simply wasted time. Teachers scold students who gaze out windows, managers frown at employees whose minds drift during meetings, and our culture celebrates constant focus and efficiency above all else.

Yet neuroscience is revealing a radically different story. Far from being idle mental noise, daydreaming activates complex brain networks involved in introspective activities such as contemplating the past or future, or thinking about the perspective of another person. Even more intriguingly, emerging research shows that the brain states associated with daydreaming share striking similarities with those induced by psychedelic substances—both characterized by increased neural flexibility, enhanced creativity, and a temporary dissolution of rigid mental patterns.

This article explores the neuroscience of daydreaming, its profound importance for human cognition and wellbeing, and its fascinating connection to psychedelic states of consciousness.

The Default Mode Network: Your Brain’s Daydream Machine

What is the Default Mode Network?

The default mode network (DMN) is a large-scale brain network primarily composed of the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, precuneus and angular gyrus. It is best known for being active when a person is not focused on the outside world and the brain is at wakeful rest, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering.

Discovered by neurologist Marcus Raichle in 2001, the DMN represents one of the most significant findings in modern neuroscience. Dr. Marcus E. Raichle’s experiments showed that the brain consumed just under 5% of the energy it typically consumed when performing a mental task, therefore even when the brain was at rest, it was engaged in high levels of activity.

The Functions of Internal Mentation

The DMN is active during times when we might be daydreaming, recalling memories, envisioning the future, monitoring the environment, thinking about the intentions of others, and so on—all things that we often do when we find ourselves just “thinking” without any explicit goal of thinking in mind.

The DMN creates a coherent “internal narrative” central to the construction of a sense of self. This network enables us to:

Engage in autobiographical memory retrieval
Simulate future scenarios
Understand others’ mental states (theory of mind)
Process self-referential thoughts
Make meaning of our experiences

The Dynamic Nature of Daydreaming

Recent research reveals that daydreaming isn’t a static state but a dynamic process. Individual differences in daydreaming frequency were negatively correlated with static functional connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and a ventral DMN subsystem involved in future-oriented thought, while daydreaming frequency was positively correlated with functional connectivity variability within the same DMN subsystem in the resting state.

This suggests that people who daydream more frequently have more flexible, dynamic brain connectivity patterns—a finding that has important implications for understanding creativity and mental health.

The Cognitive Benefits of Daydreaming

Enhancing Creativity and Problem-Solving

Many influential scientists, such as Newton and Einstein, claimed that they had their moments of inspiration while relinquishing the effort to solve the problem they were working on. This anecdotal wisdom is now backed by empirical evidence.

Research indicates that daydreaming fosters creativity because the brain’s ability to make novel connections between seemingly unrelated concepts is heightened during daydreaming episodes. Studies have shown that when scientists conducted MRI scans on individuals who were daydreaming, various regions of their brains were highly active, including the executive network, which is linked to complicated problem-solving.

Positive constructive daydreaming is positively related to creativity, while poor attentional control is negatively related to it. This distinction is crucial: not all mind-wandering is created equal.

Memory Consolidation and Learning

Research suggests that entering a state of quiet wakefulness after an experience can improve learning and memory. In one study published in the journal Nature, researchers examined the neural activity of mice while they were daydreaming. The study revealed distinct neural patterns and activation of the hippocampus, an area of the brain responsible for memory.

Cognitive neuroscientist Erin Wamsley later confirmed the point, showing that ten minutes of quiet wakefulness outperforms equal time spent watching videos when volunteers recall word lists the next day. During these brief rests, the DMN appears to shuttle fresh experiences toward long-term storage without the need for sleep.

Intelligence and Cognitive Efficiency

Those who reported more frequent daydreaming scored higher on intellectual and creative ability and had more efficient brain systems measured in the MRI machine. This challenges the conventional wisdom that mind-wandering is always counterproductive.

Higher efficiency means more capacity to think, and the brain may mind wander when performing easy tasks. In other words, frequent daydreamers may have neural systems efficient enough to complete routine tasks while simultaneously engaging in internal cognitive processes.

The Dark Side: When Daydreaming Becomes Problematic

Not all daydreaming is beneficial. The DMN can hijack the mind to mull over worries. The default mode network is about self-focus and mental time-travel, and its inactivity appears to be related to varied forms of mental illness.

Abnormal function in the default mode network is often associated with neuropsychiatric disorders. If the network becomes overactive, it can lead to intensified, self-referential thought as a symptom of schizophrenia or negative and disruptive thoughts associated with depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

The key distinction lies in the type of mind-wandering:

Positive Constructive Daydreaming: Playful, future-focused, creative thinking
Negative Rumination: Repetitive dwelling on problems, regrets, or anxieties

Understanding this distinction is crucial for harnessing the benefits of daydreaming while avoiding its pitfalls.

Psychedelics and the Default Mode Network

How Psychedelics Modulate Brain Activity

Psychedelics are a unique class of drug that commonly produce vivid hallucinations as well as profound psychological and mystical experiences. A grouping of interconnected brain regions characterized by increased temporal coherence at rest have been termed the Default Mode Network (DMN).

Altered connectivity in the DMN has been associated with a range of neuropsychiatric conditions such as depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress disorder, attention deficit hyperactive disorder, schizophrenia, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The profound insight from recent research is this: brain imaging studies suggest that when psychedelics are absorbed they decrease activity in the default mode network. As a result the sense of self appears to temporarily shut down, and thus ruminations may decrease.

The Entropic Brain Hypothesis

One of the most compelling frameworks for understanding psychedelic effects is the Entropic Brain Hypothesis, proposed by neuroscientist Robin Carhart-Harris and colleagues. At its core, the entropic brain hypothesis proposes that the quality of any conscious state depends on the system’s entropy measured via key parameters of brain function.

Based on neuroimaging data with psilocybin, a classic psychedelic drug, it is argued that the defining feature of “primary states” is elevated entropy in certain aspects of brain function, such as the repertoire of functional connectivity motifs that form and fragment across time.

In simpler terms: psychedelics increase the brain’s disorder and unpredictability, but in a way that paradoxically enhances its capacity for novel connections and insights.

Disrupting Rigid Patterns

Psychedelics tend to disrupt the activity of the DMN, temporarily disintegrating the highly organized system of networks that it is made up of, allowing for “less ordered neurodynamics”, and a greater degree of entropy within the brain. That is to say that open, freer conversations begin to take place between brain regions that are normally kept separate.

Scientists have hypothesized that psilocybin DMN disruption creates entropy in the brain, which allows brain regions that previously never communicate to interact for the first time. According to “entropic brain theory”, the state of consciousness associated with psychedelics is akin to the mind state of early childhood, where life is still new and exciting, so we experience awe and wonder at simply being alive.

The “Defragmentation” Effect

Psychiatric doctor and ayahuasca researcher Simon Ruffell likens the effects of psychedelics on the DMN to “defragmenting a computer.” When you ingest a psychedelic, activity of the DMN is significantly decreased whilst connectivity in the rest of the brain increases.

This analogy captures something essential: just as defragmenting a computer reorganizes data for more efficient operation, psychedelics may reorganize neural pathways, breaking up rigid patterns and allowing for more flexible thinking.

The Striking Parallels: Daydreaming and Psychedelic States

Shared Neural Mechanisms

Both daydreaming and psychedelic states involve modulation of the default mode network, though in different ways:

Daydreaming: Activates the DMN, allowing internal focus and mental simulation
Psychedelics: Temporarily disrupt and dissolve DMN activity, then allow it to reorganize with greater flexibility

Both states are characterized by:

Enhanced creativity and novel associations
Reduced focus on external tasks
Increased introspection and self-reflection
Temporal flexibility (mental time travel)
Therapeutic potential for mental health conditions

The Creativity Connection

Machine learning framework was adopted to examine the predictive effect of daydreaming-related brain functional connectivity on creativity. The results demonstrated that task functional connectivities related to positive constructive daydreaming and task functional connectivities related to poor attentional control both predicted an individual’s creativity score successfully.

Similarly, psychedelics have long been associated with enhanced creativity. The mechanism appears similar: both states allow the brain to make connections that would normally be suppressed by more rigid, task-focused neural activity.

Therapeutic Implications

Researchers have found that although the DMN is reduced in power during the psychedelic experience, it comes back even stronger in the weeks following the experience. Scientists postulate that this “resetting” of the DMN could be beneficial for people suffering from depression, as reductions in depression scores following psilocybin treatment are directly correlated with the specific way in which the DMN puts itself back together.

This “resetting” phenomenon suggests that both structured daydreaming practices (like meditation) and controlled psychedelic experiences might help reorganize dysfunctional patterns in the DMN that contribute to mental illness.

Practical Applications: Cultivating Healthy Daydreaming

Creating Space for Mind-Wandering

Daydream-friendly moments hide in plain sight. Researchers at the University of Virginia explain that a warm shower dilutes external noise just enough to let thoughts roam, a sweet spot for originality. Similar benefits arise during a slow walk or while washing dishes.

Activities that support beneficial daydreaming include:

Walking in nature
Taking showers or baths
Engaging in repetitive tasks (dishwashing, gardening)
Listening to music without lyrics
Gazing at natural scenery
Light exercise like yoga or swimming

Mindfulness and Balance

While daydreaming has benefits, the key is balance. Relaxation techniques, mindfulness, meditation, and even deep breathing can quiet the default mode network when it becomes overactive with negative rumination.

The goal isn’t to eliminate daydreaming or to maximize it, but to cultivate positive constructive daydreaming while learning to recognize and interrupt negative rumination patterns.

The Digital Dilemma

In our fast-paced, always-on world, there’s little room for moments when we just let our minds wander. We drift from task to task, bathed in the glow of our digital devices, leaving little room for one of our brain’s most creative processes: daydreaming.

Creating regular tech-free periods—even just 10-15 minutes daily—can help restore the brain’s capacity for spontaneous internal processing and creative thinking.

Conclusion: Embracing the Wandering Mind

The neuroscience of daydreaming and psychedelics reveals a profound truth: consciousness is not a fixed state but a dynamic spectrum. Our brains evolved not just to focus intensely on tasks but also to wander, explore, make connections, and imagine possibilities.

Both daydreaming and psychedelic experiences remind us that sometimes the most productive thing we can do is to seemingly do nothing—to let our minds roam freely through the landscape of memory, imagination, and possibility. In these moments of apparent idleness, the brain is actually hard at work, consolidating memories, solving problems creatively, and maintaining our sense of self.

As we navigate an increasingly demanding world that prizes constant productivity, we might do well to remember that our most brilliant insights, our deepest self-understanding, and our most creative solutions often emerge not from grinding effort but from those quiet moments when we give our minds permission to simply wander.

The science is clear: daydreaming isn’t a bug in the system—it’s a feature. And understanding its connection to psychedelic states of consciousness offers us new insights into the remarkable flexibility and potential of the human mind.