Default mode network/en

The default mode network (DMN) is a network of brain areas identified by Marcus E. Raichle and collaborators in the early 2000s. It is characterized by being coordinately active when the subject is not engaged in focused external tasks — during apparent rest, mind-wandering, autobiographical memory, future imagination, and reflection on oneself and others. Its main components are the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate, the precuneus, and parts of the inferior parietal lobule.

For the Paret Method the DMN is one of the structures of interest of the third axis because its activity is modulated in specific ways during states of deep absorption, expert meditation, psychedelic states, and — according to recent studies — also during hypnotic trance states and presence. The suspension or reconfiguration of the DMN appears to be one of the neuroimaging correlates of what contemplative traditions describe as no-mind, emptiness, inner silence.

Network Characteristics

• It is anti-correlated with focused attention networks: when one activates, the other tends to deactivate.
• It is energetically costly: it consumes a significant portion of resting brain metabolism.
• It is early in development: its mature structure is established in late adolescence.
• It is altered in conditions such as depression, rumination, and anxiety disorders, and is suspended in a characteristic way in advanced meditative states and under psychedelic substances (psilocybin, LSD, ayahuasca, DMT).

Relevance to the Method

The DMN is of interest to the Paret Method in three converging directions:

• States of presence and fascination — States of Integral Presence and deep trance states involve a typical reconfiguration of brain networks in which the DMN — the network of self-narrative, rumination, and agenda — is partially suspended. The concept of Mental Emptiness and the Inner Silence practices of the second axis find a plausible neural correlate in the DMN.
• Deconceptualization — The work of Wolinsky on deconceptualization describes in phenomenological language the suspension of mental constructions that today can be read as modulations of the DMN.
• Typologies and self-narrative — The six character types and the eight fixations describe stable patterns of self-narrative that have their active substrate in the DMN. Working on the types also means, in part, working on the activity of this network.

Related Pages

• CNV, Polivagale e Neurologia Interna — Introduzione — index page of the third axis
• Polyvagal theory — the model of the autonomic nervous system
• Mirror neurons — the other key neural network of the third axis
• Integral Presence — the base state of the Method
• Mental Emptiness · Inner Silence · Sub Specie Interioritatis — the phenomenological counterparts of the second axis
• Wolinsky and deconceptualization