Brain On, Brain Off!

I never know what will catch my attention. Today it was an article based on the Time magazine report of Daniel Gilbert and Randy Buckner on time travel in the brain. It turns out that our brains appear to have reciporcal functioning circuitry. By that I mean when concrete problem solving functions are engaged, the daydreaming functions that transcend time turn off and vice versa.

It is not right barin and left brain as I might have suspected but rather the frontal, parietal and medial temporal lobes of the brain that turn off when we focus on specific mental tasks or speculate about specific future events like tomorrow's weather or upcoming political changes. They turn on during daydreaming, which is all the time we are not focused on something outside ourselves.

This makes me think of the difference between goal setting and activity planning and asking the question of why I love my life so much in a nondirective manner. Perhaps they actually stimulate different parts of the brain. I was thinking I would pay attention to brain sensation as part of my study but even this or especially this would influence my results. It would, itself, shift the active circuitry of the brain. Hmmm, how to do this?

I do realize that I am not entirely objective in this reseach project. In fact I am not objective at all. I "feel" this approach is a very good one, but not in the mainstream of current teachings. I am looking for the reasons this might be so. This makes for very skewed observations. I will persist as a phenomenonalogical study none the less and allow you the reader to determine relevance to your life. At the same time I am observing relevance to my life.