The wandering mind Michael Corballis School of Psychology University of Auckland Abstract About half the time, our minds spontaneously wander away from the present, and from ongoing tasks. Spontaneous activity of the brain is also revealed in dreams and hallucinations, and may well be responsible for creative thinking, the discovery of new and unusual combinations of ideas. It has been argued mind wandering, at least in the form of mental time travel, is unique to humans, but I will summarize data from hippocampal recording suggesting that even rats appear to “play back” earlier experiences, and perhaps “preplay” new ones. Our minds can wander not only in space and time, but also into the minds of others, allowing us to construct and even fabricate stories from different perspectives. What is unique to humans is the ability to share our mental wanderings through the invention of language. Stories, soap operas, gossip, and even conference presentations, help us understand each other and the worlds we live in, and generate social cohesion and culture in the form of folklore, creation myths, and religions—and science.
Biographical statement Michael Corballis received an MSc in mathematics from Victoria University College (now University) before going on to an MA in psychology from the University of Auckland and PhD in Psychology from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He taught at McGill from 1966 to 1978, when he returned to the University of Auckland as Professor of Psychology. He has worked primarily on perception, memory, imagination, brain asymmetry, and language. In 1998 he received an honorary LLD from the University of Waterloo, Canada, and in 2002 was created Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for contributions to psychological science. In 2016 he was awarded the Rutherford Medal by the Royal Society of New Zealand.
