{"id":33637,"date":"2017-01-19T23:44:25","date_gmt":"2017-01-20T07:44:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/is-the-default-mode-of-the-brain-to-suffer"},"modified":"2017-06-04T13:51:04","modified_gmt":"2017-06-04T20:51:04","slug":"is-the-default-mode-of-the-brain-to-suffer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/is-the-default-mode-of-the-brain-to-suffer","title":{"rendered":"Is the Default Mode of the Brain to Suffer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

It underscores the fact that not all minds that wander are lost. University of British Columbia philosopher Evan Thompson<\/a>, author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy<\/em><\/a>, says the DMN\u2019s mental meanderings are \u201cthe baseline state of you as a cognitive system.\u201d It\u2019s tremendously pragmatic: being able to remember the past, plan for the future, and happen upon creative insights are all essential tools for navigating life. While he was hesitant to mix the word \u201csuffering,\u201d which is so loaded in ancient Asian religious traditions, with the \u201cdefault mode,\u201d which is of a contemporary neural vintage, the two connect in the way that suffering arises when people concretize the fleeting swirls of thought, especially around conceptions of self. Still, he says, there\u2019s \u201cparticular kind of stickiness\u201d that can come when DMN activity grows overly self-centered.<\/p>\n

Default-mode content involves an image<\/em> of self, one that\u2019s easy to become attached to. These self-conceptions are \u201caffectively charged,\u201d he says; they carry lots of emotional weight. \u201cWe constantly think that it\u2019s not just another thought, that [the image of self] is something real, not just an mental image.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It underscores the fact that not all minds that wander are lost. University of British Columbia philosopher Evan Thompson, author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: Self and Consciousness in Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy, says the DMN\u2019s mental meanderings are \u201cthe baseline state of you as a cognitive system.\u201d It\u2019s tremendously pragmatic: being able to remember the [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":395,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20,47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-33637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-futurism","category-neuroscience"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/395"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":65315,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33637\/revisions\/65315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}