Locked out of the Now

The Neuroscience of the fleeting nature of our mind. From intrusive thoughts to repetitive thoughts: how our evolution and the default mode network can work against our attempts to live in the present moment.

Humans are the only known animals whose minds are not confined to time or space. While you might physically be sitting at your desk, your mind can be reliving any moment in your life or visualizing any version of your future self, independent from what is happening in the moment. Our minds act as our own personal time machines. However, the capability to mentally be in a different moment than the one you are physically in is a cognitive achievement that comes at a high psychological cost. Harvard psychologists, Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert, say “A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind.” Through looking at the lens of future and past thoughts, we’ll find just how expensive this psychological cost is and the neuroscience behind why we potentially sabotage our happiness.

What are thoughts?

Many people understand how thoughts work in the terms of receiving and returning a signal. For example, a soccer ball is flying at us and our visual systems send a signal to the brain which detects the object and communicates with our motor areas for us to duck. Except, what about when there isn’t a ball…