In another experiment with 93 undergraduates and a larger sample of 148 American adults recruited online, some subjects solved word puzzles that incorporated words such as "analyze," "reason," and "ponder," while others completed similar puzzles with only words unrelated to thinking, such as "high" and "plane".
Many studies have focused on the role of the DMN core areas (i.e., mPFC and PCC) in "stimulus-independent" and "task-unrelated" thinking (McKiernan et al. 2006; Mason et al. 2007), including social cognitive processing, retrieval of autobiographical memory, and self-referential decision-making (for review, see Buckner et al. 2008; Mantini and Vanduffel 2013; Molnar-Szakacs and Uddin 2013).
Objective To assess the association between mind wandering (thinking unrelated to the task at hand) and the risk of being responsible for a motor vehicle crash.
The term mind wandering has been coined to describe thinking unrelated to the task at hand, a concept that has recently attracted interest from psychology and neuroscience.
Totally unrelated, but I was thinking maybe Dan and the kids and I could come spend some time down here?
For example, early reports suggested that students spend 10 40% of class time thinking about topics unrelated to the class (Schoen, 1970).
However, thinking they are unrelated would not be true at all.
You could be messaging someone else about an unrelated topic, and not even be thinking about your after-work plans.
This type of research requires a special way of thinking, often combining seemingly unrelated facts and exploring ill-known fields to produce new knowledge.
We sidestep them thinking them to be unrelated or trivial to our mission, when in reality, they offer the very insight or opportunity we need to succeed on our primary path.
