May 19, 2025
Science

When we do nothing, does our brain put itself into energy saving mode and rest? The answer is not what you think!

  • March 13, 2024
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Our brains are just like our phones. If you think it has put itself into power saving mode You’re completely wrong. Because this organ remains active even when

When we do nothing, does our brain put itself into energy saving mode and rest?  The answer is not what you think!

Our brains are just like our phones. If you think it has put itself into power saving mode You’re completely wrong. Because this organ remains active even when we think we are not doing anything useful.

Well, us What exactly does our brain do when we are not doing anything?

In fact, until the end of the 20th century, we were unaware of what was going on in our brains.

Marcus Raichle

However, due to the development of technology, we now know to a large extent what happens in our brains during different activities. In 2001, a neurologist named Marcus Raichle performed brain scans with fMRI and… He managed to open the doors full of secrets.

In this study, called fMRI, the person’s brain could be imaged while he was doing something. For example, when someone presses a button with their right hand, fMRI The part of the left hemisphere that is close to the motor cortex was activated.

Although neurologist Raichle also followed this method in his own research, after a while the person he studied Some parts of his brain are active even when he is not doing anything noticed.

Furthermore, these regions lost activity when the brain focused on an external task.

Brain

When someone from the outside is not interested in anything, then Some parts of the brain became active again. Raichle defined this brain state as a negative task and predicted that these task areas were responsible for resting the brain.

But the neurologist still does continued his research into negative tax zones and asked trial participants to close their eyes and relax during the scan. The results Raichle achieved were quite surprising.

Negative task zones activated during rest, It used much more energy than the rest of the brain. The neurologist then called this activity the default mode of brain functions.

Furthermore, a team from the Stanford School of Medicine found that this negative task activity creates a coherent network of interacting brain regions.

Brain

This discovery by the neurologist and the team became one of the first brain networks identified and this network affected different parts of the brain. These regions were also associated with memory, prediction, action evaluation, repetition of experiences, and reward/punishment actions.

The functions of this network have attracted great attention from the medical community over time, and neuroscientists have too in the absence of an externally oriented task, started wondering what the brain was doing. So it became a matter of curiosity as to what our brains did when we did nothing.

At this point, some researchers argue that the most important function of the default mode network daydreaming and mind wandering He claimed so, but there were also differing opinions. For example, this network allows our mind to travel with past memories, or allows our brain to control the flow of consciousness.

But these different views also caused confusion.

Because many have discovered various dysfunctions in the default mode network can cause psychiatric and neurological disorders and it turns out they may even have underlying causes.

Actually, the default mode network is basically; remembering past experiences, imagining the future, mind wandering, it performed the tasks of thinking about the mental states of others and processing language.

Although these tasks may seem completely unrelated at first glance, scientists have discovered that all of these functions an inner whole He claimed he could create it.

In short, the default mode network allowed us to think about who we are in our relationships with others and create a coherent self-narrative. Even Even if we recognize our own voice and face, We can say that we owe this to the default mode network.

Sources: Medium, Simply Psychology, Verywell Health

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