The Brain Stop Paying Attention: Zoning Out Is a Crucial Mental State

[Driver]

http://discovermagazine.com/2009/jul...tart:int=0&-C=

Researchers say a wandering mind may be important to setting goals, making discoveries, and living a balanced life.
by Carl Zimmer From the July-August special issue, published online June 15, 2009

[KDLMaj]

Interesting article with some potentially important implications for ADHD. The kind of switching between states that occurs during different temporal modes of thinking could provide some much-needed clarification on why people with ADHD so often report impaired sense of time and difficulty making decisions based on the future instead of living in the now.

The one thing I found interesting is that during serious zoning out, areas of the executive were bumping up in activity. Yet in ADHD, often characterized by zoning out, those areas are actually underactive. (Or are they?)