Weird Science

with Herald science writer Jamie Morton: @jamienzherald

Are daydreamers smarter?

Daydreaming during meetings isn’t necessarily a bad thing — it might even be a sign that you’re smart and creative.

“People with efficient brains may have too much brain capacity to stop their minds from wandering,” explains Professor Eric Schumacher, from the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US.

Schumacher and fellow psychology researchers measured the brain patterns of more than 100 people while they lay in an MRI machine. Participants were instructed to focus on a stationary point for five minutes, before the team checked parts of the brain worked in unison.

The results offered insights about which areas of the brain work together during an awake, resting state — and interestingly, some of the same patterns had previously been shown to be related to different cognitive abilities.

Once they figured out how the brain worked at rest, the team compared the data with tests on the participants that measured their intellectual and creative ability.

Participants also filled out a questionnaire about how much their mind wandered in daily life. Those who reported more frequent daydreaming scored higher on intellectual and creative ability and had more efficient brain systems measured in the MRI machine.

“People tend to think of mind-wandering as something that is bad,” Schumacher says.

“You try to pay attention and you can’t. Our data are consistent with the idea that this isn’t always true. Some people have more efficient brains.”

Higher efficiency means more capacity to think, driving the mind to wander when performing easy tasks. But can you tell if your brain is efficient? One clue is that you can zone in and out of conversations or tasks when appropriate, then naturally tune back in without missing important points or steps.

The researchers think the findings open the door for follow-up research to further understand when mind-wandering is harmful — and when it may actually be helpful.

Aliens may be more like us than we think

Hollywood films and science-fiction literature fuel the belief that aliens are otherworldly, monster-like beings. But research suggests we could have more in common with our extraterrestrial neighbours than initially thought.

Oxford University scientists have shown how evolutionary theory can be used to support alien predictions and better understand aliens’ behaviour.

They show that aliens are potentially shaped by the same processes and mechanisms that shape humans, such as natural selection. The theory supports the argument that foreign life forms undergo natural selection and are, like us, evolving to be fitter and stronger over time.

“A fundamental task for astrobiologists is thinking about what extraterrestrial life might be like,” Oxford researcher Sam Levin says.

Using this idea of alien natural selection as a framework, the team addressed extraterrestrial evolution, and how complexity will arise in space.

Species complexity had increased on Earth as a result of a handful of events, known as major transitions.

These transitions happened when a group of separate organisms evolved into a higher-level organism — when cells become multi-cellular organisms, for example.

The paper makes predictions about the biological make-up of complex aliens, and offers insight as to what they might look like.

“We still can’t say whether aliens will walk on two legs or have big green eyes,” Levin says.

“But we believe evolutionary theory offers a unique additional tool for trying to understand what aliens will be like, and we have shown some examples of the kinds of strong predictions we can make with it.

“By predicting that aliens have undergone major transitions — which is how complexity has arisen in species on earth, we can say that there is a level of predictability to evolution that would cause them to look like us.

“There are potentially hundreds of thousands of habitable planets in our galaxy alone,” says Levin.

“We can’t say whether or not we’re alone on Earth, but we have taken a small step forward in answering, if we’re not alone, what our neighbours are like.”