What makes us unhappiest? We will see the scientific evidence that shows that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind, based on numerous studies in psychology and neuroscience.
[Music] in the year 1975 an experiment was carried out at the university at the university of washington an experiment that revolutionized neuroscience in this experiment people were asked people were asked to enter into a new a neuroimaging machine to perform some tasks to remember some things to see something to think about a thing i
e
to perform a task task what the researchers saw is that thanks to some altercations that took place with the machine is that when the person was not doing anything yet the experimenters had not experimenters had not asked him to remind himself of things or that he was thinking about one thing or another simply the person was there waiting for the task to begin to start his task when the people were doing nothing their brain activity was displaying an enormous amount of activity [Sound] and notice until the year 1975 it was thought that when we're not doing anything when we're not we are engaged in the execution of a task our brain separates what was waiting for it from the researchers have observed there was that when the person was waiting for the machine to come to the that was not running anything, their brain was not performing any kind of activity, so this was this because it came to be thought that the brain as they themselves said had a life of its own had a life of its own that it did not cease our brain is constantly processing information we are constantly involved in a mental state that goes from one place to another
from one place to another however the characteristic of this state and what surprised the researchers is that when you ask the researchers is that when you ask a person in that state that you're doing what that you tell yourself anything and because we have the feeling that we're not doing anything in that state because because they're very fleeting thoughts are memories that come and go imaginations a lot of inner dialogue sense bodily sensations that pass in a very fast way that is to say it is not that we start to think about something that we do that would be to perform a task but we enter into a kind of state activity in which kind of state activity in which we leave that our brain that our body simply does that it deploys its mental states we let the mind is then said to wander and then what is observed wander and then what was observed is that in this wandering when the mind is left to its own free will we have free will we have a lot of activity this it was already very well known in the east for example in the buddhist world it is called the monkey mind why because they imagined those mental states like a monkey that we can get an idea of a monkey mind
monkey that doesn't stop going back and forth I have with a lot of activity that is very fast in its that doesn't concentrate on one thing only so that's what the Buddhists used to call it
that monkey mind is a wandering a mental bustle is how it has been translated in the more technical language
this has been said for thousands of years but only until the thousands of years but it was only until the year 1975 that the science was not able to see with neuroimaging techniques that really our mental state when we are let our mind go at its will to wander or wander we have a great wander we have a very high activity
but we only need to go eastward in here for we have St
Theresa of Jesus to whom we have called this state the madwoman of the house william james called it the stream of consciousness like a river that is constantly generating mental states that are thoughts that are thoughts that are thoughts that are thoughts that are thoughts that are thoughts that are thoughts that are thoughts
mental states that are thoughts that are I remember that are planning that are emotions that are sensations and above all very very very very very much dialogue and all that, the important thing is that all of that occurs spontaneously that is to say that we when we stop and do nothing and let our mind be what we see is that our mind to be what we see is what we project
all those sensations thoughts images and emotions and emotions i
arise in our body we don't call it that's why it has been called intimate life the private life of the brain today today what the Asians Buddhism called the mind of the monkey the mind of the monkey st
thérèse called the madwoman of the house or william james called the stream of consciousness in neuroscience consciousness in neuroscience it is called the net the default neural network i
the neuronal network the number of brain areas that form a neural network
circuit that is activated by default that is why this activity in neuroscience is also activity in neuroscience is also called the default neural basal activity the one that we have by base the one that we have by default the one that we have by default the activity that is spontaneous in our brain and why the default neural network is so important default neural network is so important in neuroscience because it is because it has so many clinical implications the first one is that the more activity that we have network by default i
the more brain activity the more noise the more brain noise the more brain activity we have when we are not doing anything the greater is the feeling of unhappiness this was published in the year 2011 in science magazine with an article that was very controversial and very famous and it's called a wandering mind is an unhappy mind in this study what they study what they were doing is they were asking me to a large number of people throughout the day what were they doing at the were doing at the time and how they were feeling
through statistical analysis they came to the conclusion the conclusion that what they were most dissatisfied with and feeling of unhappiness is to have a wandering mind
a wandering mind that is to say to be in that state of daydreaming where you are in many places and in none in none in particular where the mind goes from one place to another
the contents of the default network are mostly a lot of memories contents of the default network are mostly a lot of memories we bring back memories sometimes of autobiographical episodes very far away in our life others very close and that come spontaneously many memories plannings there is a lot of activation in the more imaginative areas but most of all the most above all the big part of it is inner dialogues and the important thing is that the part of the brain part of the brain that is activated is more the listening part of us
we're listening to ourselves it's thought that approximately 80% of that activity is a self-referential inner dialogue i
me narrated my own story me as the protagonist speaking in first person the default network that has been studied so much not in the world of the neuroscience and what implications it might have then at the evolutionary level and um it has been very important because you see it allows us to build the idea of the self is a network in which it's activating our own memories our planning is a dialogue in which we are always the protagonist and that generates our idea of the self but it's also true that if that has had an evolutionary role and it has its function, what has been what has been seen is that nowadays that presence the activity of the default network is excessive it is thought that we spend approximately 47 per percent of our waking time in that state
of doing nothing in a state in which we are in a state in which we are everywhere but in the present 47% of the day considering that we day considering that we work 50 percent of the time percent of our waking time is a lot of time time but what has been seen is that at the end of the day, we weekends that percentage can reach up to 75 percent and this is what it tells us because that many times we don't have a control over our own mind, we haven't developed some attitudes that allow us to cultivate our own hobbies our own hobbies that if we are left with nothing to do we do not know what to do because this has had many repercussions especially in the educational world
I don't know I don't know what we are educated without learning how to be with ourselves
to know how to be with ourselves a study that was very very striking that was also published in the magazine science he had as a subject to study what happens when people stay with ourselves if we get put into a room where we don't have a cell phone where there is no TV where we don't have a book we don't have anything that to do and we're asked to just sit there and what we've been sitting there and what has been seen is that in people that gives them a great sense of discomfort and a great sense of great burden was being given to the volunteers that were were given the option that if they felt very overwhelmed that they would feel a great sense of some type of stimulation they could give themselves electric shocks shocks that produced pain 67 percent of them of men would rather suffer pain than be we do not know how to be alone we do not know how to be alone we do not know how to be alone we do not know how to be alone we do not know how to have a calm mind we do not know how to be in the we resort to a state of daydreaming and brain wandering constantly and this is one of the great explanations, not one of the most important ones
strongest explanations that we have today to explain why people feel so dissatisfied in that percentage it therefore correlates with the amount of neural network activity per default that we have the default neural network is nowadays one of the topics of research in neuroscience, there are many, many laboratories in the world laboratories in the world which are dedicated only to the to studying that and the networks and the parts of the brain that make up that network by default are the cortex prefrontal cortex are the cingulate cortex are the parts that are most involved in memory temporal areas is the precuneus are the sensations of the body are the listening areas listening areas i
we're remembering we are planning and above all we are constantly we are constantly listening to ourselves that also has some clinical implications and it has been seen that the more active people are, the more they are of the default network are more likely to develop they are more likely to develop Alzheimer's disease or progress to Alzheimer's disease in the early stages of neurodegenerative early stages of the neurodegenerative disease
but above all what has been seen and what concerns to what is the neuroscience of well-being is that we spend a large part of our time in a state that's more of a dreaming state than it is a state of in which our mind wanders wanders in memories imaginations memories imaginations sensations and dialogues although it is true that it has a role for the the consolidation of our self-image and of our own memory what is more important is to take into account that this state of not living in that present that this state of mental divagation is the greatest source of unhappiness is the greatest source of unhappiness today
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Subtitles:
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Gut microbiota
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