Theres a surprising upside to daydreaming how zoning out can boost brainpower

If you’ve ever daydreamed about marrying your crush — or rocking out to a stadium full of adoring fans — you’re not alone.Research shows minds wander as much as 30% to 46.9% of the time.And while it’s natural to feel like spending hours in the clouds is kind of a waste, a new study published in the journal Nature says it’s very much not.

“Even when you are zoning out or just walking around or you don’t think you are doing anything special or hard, your brain is probably still working hard to help you memorize where you are, organizing the world around you, so that when you’re not zoning out anymore — when you actually need to do something and pay attention — you’re ready to do your best,” Marius Pachitariu, a group leader at the Janelia Research Campus in Ashburn, Virginia, said in a press release.Pachitariu’s team put mice in virtual reality mazes filled with different patterns.

Some visuals came with treats, others didn’t.But even when no rewards were given, the mice’s brains still changed — their visual cortex adapted just from exploring.The findings shocked the scientists.

“I was very surprised,” lead author Lin Zhong said.“I have been doing behavioral experiments since my PhD, and I never expected that without training mice to do a task, you will find the same neuroplasticity.”In fact, mice who explored freely picked up new tasks faster than those trained from the start.

The brain, it turns out, may learn better when left to wander.The team found that different parts of the visual cortex handled different jobs — one processed the world passively, the other kicked in during task learning.This suggests our brains run two systems at once: one that quietly gathers info, and another that turns it into something useful.“It means that you don’t always need a teacher to teach you: You can still learn about your environment unconsciously, and this kind of learning can prepare you for the future,” Zhong said.The s...