# Your Brain’s Daydream Network

- Link: https://clearingintheforest.org/your-brains-daydream-network/
- Published: 2026-10-20T22:00:45+00:00
- Author: Saal_clearingforest

[ 🌲 A clearing in the forest ](https://clearingintheforest.org/)

[ All pages ](https://clearingintheforest.org/?page_id=267#pages)

A brain experiment you can do right now

# Your brain is never switched off.

Not when you're bored. Not when you stare out of the window. Not even when you think
you're thinking about nothing. Let's prove it.

### The 10-second test

Press start. Look away from the screen. Try to think about **absolutely nothing**
until the count ends.

10

**Did your mind stay empty?** Almost nobody's does. You probably thought about something
you did earlier, something coming up, or someone you know.

That wandering wasn't a failure. It was a part of your brain called the **Default
Mode Network** doing its job. Scroll down to meet it.

Two teams, one brain

## The daydream team and the focus team

Your brain has big teams of areas that work together, like players on a pitch. Two
of them take turns. Flip the switch and watch.

Front of the head is on the left. This drawing squashes the inside and outside of
the brain into one picture, so it's a map, not a photo. Tap a dot.

### Daydream mode is ON

The orange areas light up and talk to each other. You're remembering, imagining,
and thinking about yourself and other people. Tap any dot to see what it does.

💜 The purple dot is the **salience network**: the referee. It spots when something
important happens and flips the switch between teams.

**Meet Marcus Raichle.** He's a brain doctor (a neurologist) in St Louis, USA, and
he'll be your guide on this page. In the 1990s he kept noticing something in brain
scans that everyone else threw away. Keep scrolling to find out what.

Make it personal

## What has your daydream network done today?

Tick everything you've done in the last 24 hours. Be honest, nobody's watching.

Tick a box to start.

The detective story

## How scientists found a network nobody was looking for

This took almost 80 years and several people. Tap each year to open it.

⚡

**Marcus's big clue: energy.** Your brain is only about 2% of your body weight but
uses about 20% of your body's energy. When you start a hard task, that energy use
goes up by only a tiny amount. So Marcus asked: _if hard work only adds a little,
what is all the rest of that energy doing?_ His answer was that the brain is always
busy on its own inner work. The daydream network is part of that.

Brains and health

## When the daydream team won't behave

Doctors care about this network because it seems to work differently in some illnesses.
Tap a card to flip it. Each card shows how **sure** scientists really are.

Test yourself

## The Daydream Quiz

Have the faith to doubt

## What scientists don't know yet

 * **Brain scans show teamwork, not wires.** An fMRI scanner shows areas that get
   busier and quieter at the same time. That's like seeing two friends always arrive
   together. It doesn't show the road they travelled on.
 * **Everyone's map is a bit different.** When scientists scanned the same people
   many times, the network sat in slightly different places in each person. Averages
   hide this.
 * **Many studies were too small.** A huge 2022 study showed you need thousands 
   of people to find reliable brain–behaviour links. Lots of older studies had fewer
   than 50.
 * **No scan can diagnose you.** In about 1,800 people, no brain scan measure could
   reliably tell who was depressed. Doctors still diagnose by talking to you.
 * **"Rest" is the wrong word.** Newer research says this network isn't about resting.
   It's about using memories and knowledge to understand what's happening, even 
   during some tasks.

🔄

**The best bit about Marcus:** in 2025, aged well into his 80s, he co-wrote a paper
updating his own idea. It gave the "focus team" a proper name: the **action-mode
network**. Good scientists change their minds when the evidence changes.

### Where this comes from

[Ref: Raichle ME, MacLeod AM, Snyder AZ, Powers WJ, Gusnard DA, Shulman GL. A default
mode of brain function. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2001;98(2):676–682. doi:10.1073/
pnas.98.2.676]

[Ref: Shulman GL, Fiez JA, Corbetta M, et al. Common blood flow changes across visual
tasks: II. Decreases in cerebral cortex. J Cogn Neurosci. 1997;9(5):648–663. doi:
10.1162/jocn.1997.9.5.648]

[Ref: Greicius MD, Krasnow B, Reiss AL, Menon V. Functional connectivity in the 
resting brain: a network analysis of the default mode hypothesis. Proc Natl Acad
Sci U S A. 2003;100(1):253–258. doi:10.1073/pnas.0135058100]

[Ref: Buckner RL, Andrews-Hanna JR, Schacter DL. The brain's default network: anatomy,
function, and relevance to disease. Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2008;1124:1–38. doi:10.1196/
annals.1440.011]

[Ref: Raichle ME. The brain's default mode network. Annu Rev Neurosci. 2015;38:433–
447. doi:10.1146/annurev-neuro-071013-014030]

[Ref: Menon V. 20 years of the default mode network: a review and synthesis. Neuron.
2023;111(16):2469–2487. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2023.04.023]

[Ref: Smallwood J, Bernhardt BC, Leech R, Bzdok D, Jefferies E, Margulies DS. The
default mode network in cognition: a topographical perspective. Nat Rev Neurosci.
2021;22(8):503–513. doi:10.1038/s41583-021-00474-4]

[Ref: Dosenbach NUF, Raichle ME, Gordon EM. The brain's action-mode network. Nat
Rev Neurosci. 2025;26(3):158–168. doi:10.1038/s41583-024-00895-x]

[Ref: Greicius MD, Srivastava G, Reiss AL, Menon V. Default-mode network activity
distinguishes Alzheimer's disease from healthy aging. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 
2004;101(13):4637–4642. doi:10.1073/pnas.0308627101]

[Ref: Yan CG, Chen X, Li L, et al. Reduced default mode network functional connectivity
in patients with recurrent major depressive disorder. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 
2019;116(18):9078–9083. doi:10.1073/pnas.1900390116]

[Ref: Castellanos FX, Margulies DS, Kelly C, et al. Cingulate-precuneus interactions:
a new locus of dysfunction in adult attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Biol
Psychiatry. 2008;63(3):332–337. doi:10.1016/j.biopsych.2007.06.025]

[Ref: Koch SBJ, van Zuiden M, Nawijn L, Frijling JL, Veltman DJ, Olff M. Aberrant
resting-state brain activity in posttraumatic stress disorder: a meta-analysis and
systematic review. Depress Anxiety. 2016;33(7):592–605. doi:10.1002/da.22478]

[Ref: Li M, Woelfer M, Colic L, et al. Default mode network connectivity change 
corresponds to ketamine's delayed glutamatergic effects. Eur Arch Psychiatry Clin
Neurosci. 2020;270(2):207–216. doi:10.1007/s00406-018-0942-y]

[Ref: Siegel JS, Subramanian S, Perry D, et al. Psilocybin desynchronizes the human
brain. Nature. 2024;632(8023):131–138. doi:10.1038/s41586-024-07624-5]

[Ref: Brewer JA, Worhunsky PD, Gray JR, Tang YY, Weber J, Kober H. Meditation experience
is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity.
Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2011;108(50):20254–20259. doi:10.1073/pnas.1112029108]

[Ref: Gordon EM, Laumann TO, Gilmore AW, et al. Precision functional mapping of 
individual human brains. Neuron. 2017;95(4):791–807.e7. doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2017.07.011]

[Ref: Marek S, Tervo-Clemmens B, Calabro FJ, et al. Reproducible brain-wide association
studies require thousands of individuals. Nature. 2022;603(7902):654–660. doi:10.1038/
s41586-022-04492-9]

[Ref: Winter NR, Leenings R, Ernsting J, et al. Quantifying deviations of brain 
structure and function in major depressive disorder across neuroimaging modalities.
JAMA Psychiatry. 2022;79(9):879–888. doi:10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2022.1780]

Clearing in the Forest · Made for curious minds aged 16 and up