The default mode network is a group of brain regions that gets busier when your attention turns inward, to memories, to yourself and other people, and to what might happen next. Ideas often turn up when you stop because a break after hard work on a problem tends to help. The network seems to play a part in creative thinking too, though the brain evidence shows links rather than proof.
Say you’re a founder who’s spent the morning on a pricing problem and got nowhere. You’ve had enough, so you take the dog round the field. Halfway round, the answer’s just there. Back at your desk, the afternoon fills up with calls and email, and nothing like it happens again all week.
The science behind that walk isn’t as tidy as the shower-thought articles suggest. So I’ll keep the research and my own view apart.
What the default mode network is, in plain English
The default mode network is the brain’s inward-facing mode. In 2001, Marcus Raichle and colleagues spotted a set of areas whose activity reliably dropped across a wide range of focused, goal-directed tasks. They called it a “default mode of brain function”, one that’s suspended while you concentrate (PNAS, 2001).
Seven years later, Buckner, Andrews-Hanna and Schacter pulled three decades of brain imaging together. They described a specific brain system that’s most active when you aren’t focused on the world outside you (Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2008). It’s got linked parts. One supplies memories and associations from past experience. Another, towards the front of the brain, uses that material to build scenes about you. They meet at hubs such as the posterior cingulate cortex.
So “default” doesn’t mean idle. When you’re staring out of the window, your brain is still busy, just pointed inward.
What the default mode network does
The default mode network handles the thinking you do inside your own head. Buckner’s review describes it as active when people recall their own past, picture the future and consider other people’s points of view. The authors suggest it helps us use past experience to plan, and maybe to make the most of moments when nothing outside needs our attention. Vinod Menon’s review of 20 years of research adds thinking about yourself, language and meaning, and mind-wandering. He argues the network pulls memory and language into a coherent “internal narrative”. That’s the running story that gives you a sense of who you are (Neuron, 2023).
If you lead people, you’ll know this ground. You replay yesterday’s tense conversation, rehearse how the board will take the numbers, and wonder what your best engineer’s really thinking.
Why ideas often arrive after you stop
Setting a problem aside after a proper go at it tends to help. Psychologists call that gap incubation. Sio and Ormerod pooled the experimental studies and found a positive incubation effect (Psychological Bulletin, 2009). It was bigger for tasks with lots of possible answers, like listing uses for a brick, than for puzzles with one hidden answer. More work before the break meant a bigger effect, and demanding work during the break shrank it.
Working life shows something similar. Gable, Hopper and Schooler asked professional writers and physicists to report their most creative idea of each day. About a fifth came while they were doing something other than work and thinking about something unrelated. People rated those ideas as creative and as important as on-task ones, and they were likelier to break an impasse, the “aha” kind (Psychological Science, 2019).
So the order matters. Load the problem first, then step away. A break you take before you’ve properly wrestled with it gives incubation less to work with.
What the creativity research does and doesn’t show
The default mode network takes part in creative thinking, alongside other brain networks. What the research doesn’t show is that daydreaming makes you creative, or that you can switch the network on to order. You’ll hear three claims that go further than the evidence.
- “The default mode network is the creativity network.” It’s one player. Roger Beaty and colleagues reviewed imaging studies of divergent thinking, poetry and musical improvisation. The default and executive control networks can work against each other, but they tend to cooperate during creative work (Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2016). My reading is that good ideas need the wandering side and the judging side working together.
- “Brain scans prove it.” They show links. In a study of 163 people, Beaty’s team found a pattern of connections across the default, salience and executive systems. It predicted creative thinking ability in new people and in separate samples (PNAS, 2018). Prediction isn’t cause, though. The nearest thing to causal evidence I’ve found is small: 13 people having awake brain surgery. When a spot in their default mode network was stimulated, they came up with fewer uses for everyday objects. Their ideas weren’t any less original (Molecular Psychiatry, 2022).
- “Mind-wandering is why breaks work.” That’s unsettled. Baird and colleagues gave 145 people a 12-minute break. People given an easy task, one that lets the mind wander, improved more on creative problems they’d already seen. A demanding task, rest or no break didn’t help as much (Psychological Science, 2012). Then Murray and colleagues tested the idea again in two studies with 443 people. They didn’t find any evidence that mind-wandering during the break boosted creativity (Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity, and the Arts, 2024).
So take the break, and hold the explanation loosely. Nobody’s settled why it helps.
Value Creativity and the default mode network
In BRAVE, my framework for education, the V is Value Creativity, and I tie it to the default mode network. That pairing is my teaching choice. The studies above link the network to creative thinking. None of them tests BRAVE, and the science hasn’t shown that it works.
In a classroom, Value Creativity means there’s room for unfinished thinking. A project gets left alone for a day before the second draft, instead of being finished in one sitting.
At work, AI can hand you twenty options in seconds. I don’t think it can do your incubation for you, though, because what your mind joins up is your own memory and your own read of the people involved. I’ve argued before that leaders should measure AI by the attention it frees. Some of that freed attention belongs here, on problems you’ve loaded and then left alone.
How leaders can protect unstructured thinking time
Protect it on purpose, because we’ll fill the gap if we can. Wilson and colleagues ran 11 studies where people sat alone for 6 to 15 minutes with nothing to do but think. Most didn’t enjoy it. In one, people spent 15 minutes alone with a button that gave them an electric shock. Of those who’d said they’d pay not to be shocked again, 12 of 18 men and 6 of 24 women pressed it at least once (Science, 2014).
A phone makes that gap far too easy to fill. I haven’t seen a study showing screens block incubation, so this bit’s my view. An inbox or a news feed is more demanding than it feels, and demanding work in the gap shrinks the effect.
Try this on the next problem that’s stuck:
- Load it properly. Give it 30 minutes of focused work, then write down exactly where you’re stuck. A longer run at the problem gave a bigger incubation effect in Sio and Ormerod’s review.
- Step away into something light. Walk, wash up, drive the long way home. In the first of four experiments by Oppezzo and Schwartz, walking raised creativity scores on an alternate-uses test for 81% of people. On a test with one right answer, it was 23% (Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 2014). So walk for options, and sit down for the decision.
- Leave the phone in your pocket, podcasts included. That one’s my rule, and I haven’t seen a study test it.
- Catch it when it lands. Keep a notebook or a voice note handy, and get back to the problem the same day.
For a team, build the gaps into the calendar. Send the problem out a few days before the strategy session, so they’ve already wrestled with it by the time they turn up. And stop booking meetings back to back. I’ve written about why leaders need breaks between meetings. It’s the other half of protecting focus: deep work loads the problem, and white space lets it settle.
Pick one stuck problem this week and run those four steps on it.
How Colin helps
I help leaders, founders and educators make room for the thinking AI can’t do for them. Human behaviour and neuroscience have been at the centre of my work for close to two decades, and that’s the lens I bring to keynotes and advisory work. Creativity is one of the five human intelligences I’d argue AI can’t automate, with Curiosity, Critical Thinking, Adaptive Leadership and Emotional Intelligence. That’s my working map of the human side of work, not a scientific model.
If you’d like to talk about a keynote or advisory work for your school, university or business, get in touch.
Related questions
Is the default mode network good or bad?
Neither. It’s part of how a healthy brain handles memory, imagination and other people. More mind-wandering isn’t automatically better, though. Killingsworth and Gilbert sampled people’s thoughts through a smartphone app. Their minds were off what they were doing almost as often as on it, and they were less happy when they wandered (Science, 2010).
How do you switch on the default mode network?
You don’t need a hack. It’ll come forward whenever your attention turns inward, to remembering, imagining a conversation or planning ahead (Buckner and colleagues, 2008). An undemanding activity gives your mind room to wander (Baird and colleagues, 2012). Be wary of anything that’s sold as a way to “activate” it.
Why do I get my best ideas in the shower?
Probably because you’ve been loading the problem for days, and a shower’s one of the few places with no screen and nothing demanding to do. That’s in line with the incubation research (Sio and Ormerod, 2009). In Gable’s study, about a fifth of the best daily ideas came while people’s minds were elsewhere. So it’s a good place for ideas, just not the only one.