Ask Me Something: What happens when we daydream?

We are all a little guilty of drifting in thought to somewhere else during a boring conversation, tough class or long meeting, but why do we do this?

Dr. Julia Kam, PhD, an assistant professor in the Department of Psychology in the Faculty of Arts, is studying just that. Kam monitors the brainwaves of people in her lab and tries to measure exactly what happens to our brains when we drift into daydreaming. 

What happens to a brain during a daydream? 

When we daydream, parts of the brain help us disconnect from the world. Specifically, it gives less resources to the parts of the brain that take in and process information from the outside world. At the same time, different parts of the brain work together to help support and facilitate our thoughts, whether it be thinking about the past or the future, ourselves, or others. Now, in terms of which parts of the brain work together, that depends on what we're thinking about.

Why do some people daydream more than others? And what does it mean if you daydream a lot? 

There's a lot of factors at play here. For example, we know that certain personality traits report daydreaming more frequently than others. Another factor is working memory capacity, which generally refers to how much information we can keep in our minds. How often we daydream is also heavily dependent upon the task that we're doing. Is it an easy task or a hard task? Also, how motivated and alert are we? All these factors interact with each other to determine how often we daydream. In terms of what it means if you daydream a lot, the reality is daydreaming does get a pretty bad rep. However, what we do know is that daydreaming in and of itself is not necessarily harmful. In fact, it can be beneficial. 

What is maladaptive daydreaming? 

Maladaptive daydreaming is an experience where we frequently daydream almost excessively, to a point where we sometimes choose to daydream over interacting with other people in the real world, and also maybe to a point where we worry it disrupts our ability to function in important areas of life, such as at work or school. 

What are daydreams usually about? Are they always happy? 

What we do know is that people tend to think about the past and future when they daydream. They also spend a lot of time thinking about themselves and others. In terms of whether daydreams are always happy, what we found recently is that the relationship between our thoughts and our feelings do depend on what we think about. For example, if we think about something negative and something that seems to be outside of our control, such as rumination, we tend to be less happy. However, what we also know is that if we think about something that goes from one topic to another, essentially letting our mind wander off to wherever it wants to, we tend to feel happier. So, what we learn from that is that it's important to be mindful of what you think about, and to pay attention to how these thoughts make you feel.