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Glossary

Default mode network

Defined in topic 30

Brain regions, including medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortex, that grow more active when no task holds the mind. They handle memory, imagining the future and reading other people.

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Where this comes from

In the reference topic that owns this term

Reference topic 30, The Attention Economy and the Boredom Deficit, states the mismatch as a card: what the system evolved to expect, what it gets instead, and what happens in the gap.

Mismatch card

What it expects

Rewards that are earned, spaced and occasionally absent, separated by long intervals with nothing to attend to.

What it gets

A pocket device engineered for time on device, paying out on a variable schedule and filling every gap in the day.

What happens in the gap

Checking behavior that resists extinction, and the loss of the idle minutes in which the brain's inward work has always been done.

The full card, and the topic behind it

What that chapter recommends

3 of the 4 graded recommendations in Reference topic 30, strongest evidence first. How the grades work.

  1. Phone-free times and places

    ProbableEvidence grade: Probable. Good observational evidence with a plausible mechanism, or small or few trials.

    Meals, the first and last hour of the day, and the bedroom overnight. The support is indirect but it is randomized: four weeks off Facebook raised offline time with friends and family and nudged well-being up.

    Read it in full

  2. Turn off non-essential notifications

    EmergingEvidence grade: Emerging. Early, small, animal-only, or actively contested.

    Every push alert is one more unpredictable payout on the schedule Schüll described in casinos.

    Read it in full

  3. Leave gaps in the day

    EmergingEvidence grade: Emerging. Early, small, animal-only, or actively contested.

    A walk, a commute or a wait, taken without the device. The evidence supports this much: the default network runs during unstructured time and handles memory, self-reflection and imagining the future.

    Read it in full

The argument behind this term, its studies and its notes are in Reference topic 30 of the reference library. The book gives the practical version. Get the book.