Daydream Believer

You've heard the statistic: every eight seconds, men think about sex. But that doesn't automatically make them perverts.

In fact, a new study conducted at Harvard and reported by CNN reveals that it's perfectly normal, if not to be thinking about sex, to be thinking about something. Anything. If a person is given a job to do, he will usually turn his full attention to it. But when left without tasks or deadlines, "the mind does not simply go blank." According to CNN:

When [Psychologist Malia] Mason asked people what was happening during this down time, the answer was clear.

"It's daydreaming," she said. "But I find that the vast majority of time, people aren't having fanciful thoughts. People are thinking about what they have to do later today."

Her team has chosen to call it stimulus-independent thought or mind wandering.

Mason's team used fMRI technology to scan study volunteers' brains while performing a cognitive task, and also in between tasks. The scans while subjects completed the task didn't show anything new, but the scans in between tasks showed activity in the superior frontal gyrus (the part of the frontal lobe that is thought to relate to self-awareness), the insular cortex (which has a role in emotion), and parts of the temporal lobe (which controls some functions relating to episodic/declarative memory, as well as naming, facial recognition, visual processing, and some language functions).

So next time you find yourself creating a mental shopping list, picking out your outfit for the evening, or thinking about last night's date when you're supposed to be listening in on a conference call, just remember that there's nothing wrong with you. Your brain is doing what everyone else's does. Just try to look like you're paying attention when your boss looks your way.

Image via eBay.se.