(DMN)
“Are you cold?” asks my wife. This is not a simple question. I must return from my mental introspection, to re-inhabit my physical body and seek input from the temperature sensors.
It would need to be tremendously cold (or hot) for the temperature to do this by itself, and even summoned (back) to check, my answer is likely to be “Meh – not really” unless my fingertips are completely frozen.
I often don’t really “live” here. I live inside my head, well, obviously, we all live inside our heads, but I feel that my engagement with the “real” world is sometimes minimised.
I can register the stairs I must walk down, but the message about the 3 bottles waiting on the top step to go down to the bin…it’s not that I don’t see them as I go by, it just doesn’t interrupt the program that’s playing inside.
I’ve always assumed that everyone does this to some degree; listening to a dull, speech/radio program/ homily/sermon. Waiting in the queue/lobby/bus stop. Travelling mindlessly from A to B to C… It’s not entirely voluntary, if I notice, I can “catch myself” and choose to focus, but in a lot of cases I only know I’m absent when I’m called back, or when I’m required to “change gears” – cross the road, make a coffee, answer a call.
There is even a name for this, it’s called “inattention blindness”.
Is this a problem? Well, if it happens when you’re driving – and there are quite a few studies on this – it seriously increases your reaction time to any sudden change, but perversely, probably makes you safer in “normal” traffic. Your “default mode network” brain is very efficient.
Look at your shoes. Do you remember tying those laces this morning?
Clearly you did, you probably do so every day, maybe at the same spot, at the same time, and you don’t need to look, your fingers know. Similarly, a musician can play a chord or rhythm without thinking about it. Default Mode Network does a lot of work for us.
Apparently, though, it does not take out the bottles.
Next week on IaDL: Where do I go when I’m not here?
Dalmallyfest the Asylum 