Nature reviews. Neuroscience
July 5, 2021
Jonathan Smallwood, Boris C. Bernhardt, Robert Leech et al.
970 citations
The default mode network (DMN) is a set of brain regions in the parietal, temporal, and frontal cortex that typically reduce activity during attention-demanding tasks but increase activity during complex cognition linked to memory or abstract thought. These regions are located farthest from sensory and motor systems. The paper considers how knowledge of the DMN's topographic characteristics can be used to better understand its contributions to cognition and behavior.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
August 27, 2018
Mladen Sormaz, Charlotte Murphy, Hao-ting Wang et al.
291 citations
The default mode network (DMN), a set of brain regions traditionally linked to off-task or mind-wandering states, actually contributes to detailed, task-relevant cognition during active tasks. Using fMRI, participants performed working-memory tasks while reporting their thoughts. Patterns of neural activity showed that distinctions between on- and off-task thought involved regions near sensory and motor cortex, not the DMN. However, the level of detail in ongoing thought corresponded to activity patterns within the DMN during memory maintenance. These findings indicate the DMN supports detailed cognition under active task conditions, challenging the view that it is solely task-negative.
Neuroimage
January 12, 2018
Charlotte Murphy, Elizabeth Jefferies, Shirley-Ann Rueschemeyer et al.
288 citations
The default mode network supports cognition independent of immediate environment and higher-order conceptual representations. A novel paradigm manipulated perceptual information availability and representational complexity during decision-making. Brain regions including left and right angular gyri and left middle temporal gyrus responded when cognition combined stimulus independence with multi-modal information. These default mode network sites showed stronger response to demanding memory judgments than easier perceptual tasks, contradicting the view they support automatic cognition. These regions were at the extreme end of a macroscale gradient from sensorimotor to transmodal cortex, suggesting functional distance from sensory input enables conceptually rich cognitive states in absence of input.
Nature Communications
August 23, 2019
Adam Turnbull, Hao-ting Wang, Charlotte Murphy et al.
197 citations
When a task is undemanding, people often let their minds wander to personally relevant thoughts. The dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), a brain region known for maintaining goal representations, also helps prioritize off-task thinking. Neural activity in the DLPFC was high both when people were on-task under demanding conditions and off-task during a non-demanding task. Individuals who increased off-task thought when external demands decreased showed weaker correlation between neural signals linked to external tasks and lateral default mode network regions within the DLPFC, and had less cortical grey matter in regions sensitive to those external signals. The findings suggest that humans use the DLPFC to align cognition with personal goals when environmental demands drop, prioritizing daydreaming.
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
March 21, 2017
Giulia Poerio, Mladen Sormaz, Hao-ting Wang et al.
185 citations
Mind-wandering involves cognition detached from the immediate environment. The default mode network (DMN), a set of brain regions far from sensory and motor areas, is implicated but its exact role is unclear. This study examined how individual differences in resting-state DMN connectivity relate to performance on memory, social, and planning tasks and to variability in spontaneous thought. Poor external engagement was linked to stronger coupling between medial and dorsal DMN subsystems, while decoupling of the core from the cerebellum predicted detailed memory retrieval. Both patterns predicted off-task future thoughts. The DMN supports stimulus-independent cognition through strong subsystem coupling and allows memory representations to form conscious experience.
iScience
February 2, 2021
Jonathan Smallwood, Adam Turnbull, Hao-ting Wang et al.
130 citations
The landscape of ongoing thought is heterogeneous and shaped by both personal traits and environmental context. Recent work shows that attention and control systems organize experience in response to changing demands, while the default mode network contributes not only to task-negative or episodic content but also to the vividness of experience in both task contexts and spontaneous self-generated states. Multiple neural systems reflect the landscape of ongoing thought, and it is important to distinguish processes that shape how experience unfolds from those that regulate it.
Neuroimage
June 22, 2020
Brontë Mckeown, Will Strawson, Hao-ting Wang et al.
102 citations
People whose brain connectivity patterns make the sensorimotor system most distinct from the visual system are more likely to report thoughts about solving problems or goals and less likely to report thoughts about the past. This finding comes from a study where participants underwent resting-state fMRI and then completed a questionnaire about their thoughts during the scan. A non-linear dimension reduction algorithm identified components explaining the greatest variance in whole-brain connectivity patterns. The results suggest that unique patterns of experience are linked to distinct neurocognitive profiles, with unimodal systems playing an important role.
Scientific Reports
December 3, 2020
Theodoros Karapanagiotidis, Diego Vidaurre, Andrew J. Quinn et al.
82 citations
When people are not engaged in an explicit task, they experience a variety of self-generated thoughts, such as planning or reminiscing. Using machine learning to analyze brain activity from resting-state fMRI scans, researchers identified distinct neural states that recur over time. Two of these states predicted different patterns of thinking. One neural state, resembling activity seen during demanding tasks, was linked to problem-solving about the future. Another state, associated with less demanding conditions, was tied to intrusive thoughts about the past. These two states fell at opposite ends of a brain hierarchy related to cognitive demand. The findings show that tracking moment-to-moment changes in brain function can help classify self-generated mental states and that these states align with the brain's response to cognitive tasks.
Nature Neuroscience
January 28, 2025
Casey Paquola, Margaret Garber, Stefan Frässle et al.
58 citations
The default mode network (DMN) is a set of brain regions important for complex thought and behavior. By combining postmortem tissue analysis and brain scans, researchers found that the DMN contains different types of cells, some specialized for processing single senses, others for combining information, and still others for memory. The DMN includes regions that receive input from sensory areas and a core that is relatively cut off from direct sensory information. Analysis of how signals flow through the DMN showed it uniquely balances output across different levels of sensory processing. These findings provide a structural basis for understanding the DMN's broad role in brain function and cognition.
Scientific Reports
November 7, 2019
Meichao Zhang, Nicola Savill, Daniel S. Margulies et al.
48 citations
People often find their thoughts drifting away from the text they are reading, a tendency known as mind-wandering, which impairs comprehension and memory for the text. Using fMRI, the study found that individuals with poorer memory for texts show reduced activity in the left middle temporal gyrus in response to written input. This region sits at the intersection of the default mode, dorsal attention, and frontoparietal networks. In a resting-state analysis, stronger connectivity within the default mode network was associated with better text memory, while greater decoupling between the default mode network and medial visual regions was linked to more frequent mind-wandering. These results suggest that intrinsic brain network connectivity influences how attention stays engaged with reading.
Journal of Neuroscience
April 8, 2024
Ximing Shao, Katya Krieger-Redwood, Meichao Zhang et al.
20 citations
The default mode network (DMN) typically deactivates during external tasks but supports semantic cognition. Analysis of four human fMRI datasets shows that its subsystems respond differently: the frontotemporal subsystem activates across domains and modalities, especially during abstract verbal tasks, and shows more tuned states with higher semantic retrieval demands. The medial temporal subsystem activates for both perceptually coupled scenes and decoupled autobiographical memory, with stronger responses to picture associations, supporting scene construction. The core DMN consistently deactivates, particularly for externally oriented tasks. These distinct responses relate to each subsystem's location on intrinsic connectivity gradients, revealing complementary roles in semantic cognition.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
April 14, 2026
Meichao Zhang, Casey Paquola, Katya Krieger-Redwood et al.
The brain's default mode network (DMN) contains spatially distinct subregions that support different cognitive processes: some DMN areas are more active during perceptual decisions about faces, while others are more active during memory-guided decisions based on previously seen images. These subregions differ in their connectivity profiles—perception-related areas have receiver-like, afferent-biased connections across the heteromodal cortex, whereas memory-related areas have sender-like, efferent-biased connections with perceptual-motor and attentional systems beyond the DMN. This double dissociation, found across three fMRI datasets, suggests that DMN architecture is organized to flexibly support both external perception and internal memory-guided thought.
PLoS One
August 25, 2016
Jonathan Smallwood, Theodoros Karapanagiotidis, Florence Ruby et al.
Spontaneous thoughts about absent people, places, or events arise from interactions within the default mode network (DMN). The posterior cingulate cortex, a core DMN region, integrates information from medial and lateral temporal lobe memory systems, which represent different aspects of knowledge. Individual differences in connectivity between temporal lobe regions and the DMN core predict the content and form of people's spontaneous thoughts. In a laboratory study, variations in functional connectivity from both medial and lateral temporal lobe regions were associated with different patterns of spontaneous thought, converging on an overlapping region in the posterior cingulate cortex. The posterior DMN core acts as a representational hub that integrates temporal lobe information, shaping spontaneous thought.