On December 1, 2013, a Metro-North commuter train derailed in the Bronx in New York. The engineer claimed that he was tired and in a “trance” of some sort. Whatever the situation may have been, this lack of focus caused four people to lose their lives and several more to be injured. However, many people are not buying the engineer’s story. Certain people believe that he is using the story of being in a trance as an excuse for his own carelessness. The question that arises is does mind wandering occur because of bad memory or does the mind just subconsciously travel?
There have been several times where I would drive home from high school, from my friend’s house, or from a local restaurant and not even remember how I did so when I got home. I couldn’t clearly remember the roads I took, giving my turning signal, or passing traffic signs on my way there. I know I’m not crazy because this has occurred to many people that I know and probably to many of you as well. So why is it that we were able to safely arrive at our destination but not remember how?
When a person can’t remember what happened yet was able to complete common tasks, they do so unconsciously. Matthew Ebben, Ph.D., behavioral sleep expert at Weill Cornell Center for Sleep Medicine found that as parts of the brain turn off, “an individual might slip into automatic behavior and “awake” with no memory of what happened during that short time.”
Other examples of activities that occur “unconsciously” include preparing an easy meal, having a conversation with somebody and not remembering what was said, and reading a book or newspaper and not remembering it and having to read it over again.
In a study done by Jonathan Smallwood and Jonathan Schooler, an experiment involving the monitoring of brain activity on random participants found that people are usually “offline” 13% of the time. In this time they are completely unaware of what they are doing and of their surroundings. What happens during this period of “zoning out” is that our brains consider the tasks we’re performing as simple or trivial. Because we are so used to or comfortable with the tasks, such as driving home from a familiar place or making a cup of tea, we tend not to think about it much. Our brain splits into the conscious and unconscious. The unconscious part of our brains performs the task that we do not remember. We are so familiar with what the task is we don’t feel the need to ruminate over it. Our brain is unconsciously aware of the turns we must make, bottles we must open, and words we must “observe”. However, we are not necessarily understanding or retaining anything we did. The other track of our brain, the conscious one, is usually focused on internal feelings. Occasionally we tend to have imaginary conversations with people, make up scenarios (daydream), or even reminisce on events that happened earlier. Regardless of what the conscious side of the brain is doing, it is not fully there to support the unconscious part.
Additional factors that have influence on a person zoning out is how interesting the subject matter is. In the above experiment, people focused more closely when the response rate required them to be alert and quick. They were also able to hold the participants attention with comedy clips opposed to boring ones. It is quite concerning ultimately that some activities as dangerous as driving can’t hold a person’s attention. Sure getting to your home from a not busy street isn’t the worst thing while zoned out but what happens when you’re caught at an intersection the person driving across you loses control of their car?
Another study found that our memory also effects how our thoughts travel. Daniel Levinson found that those people with a higher working memory space (“mental workspace that allows us to juggle multiple thoughts simultaneously”) tend to wander off more frequently and more easily. Because the working memory space is high, the brain’s ability to store information is higher. And although this may seem to help a person focus more, it actually causes the brain to stray to other “memories” and thoughts. The more information stores, the more distractions the brain has.
