During quiet waking, brain exercise in mice suggests the animals are daydreaming a couple of current picture (Nature). The researchers tracked the exercise of neurons in the visible cortex of the brains of mice while the animals remained in a quiet waking state. They discovered that sometimes these neurons fired in a sample just like one which occurred when a mouse checked out an precise picture, suggesting that the mouse was considering — or daydreaming — about the picture. Moreover, the patterns of exercise throughout a mouse’s first few daydreams of the day predicted how the brain’s response to the picture would change over time. The analysis offers tantalizing, if preliminary, proof that daydreams can form the brain’s future response to what it sees. This causal relationship must be confirmed in additional analysis, the group cautioned, however the outcomes provide an intriguing clue that daydreams throughout quiet waking might play a job in brain plasticity — the brain’s skill to transform itself in response to new experiences.
