What were you thinking about just now? Maybe your thoughts were coloured by the task at hand, such as making a cup of tea or checking your emails at work. Or had you ‘tuned out’ and become ‘lost in thought’? During these dreamy moments, the mind wanders in time, for example imagining the next meal or reflecting on past regrets.
This mind-wandering, far from being mere distraction, is potentially a key part of how we connect our sense of self with our experiences of the world around us. Inward reflection can also be vital for our emotional wellbeing, giving us space to process emotions, think through personal experiences, and check in with ourselves.
Let’s return to your recent stream of consciousness: were you purely absorbed in abstract thoughts or were you also aware of your body? Could you feel your heart beating? The rhythm of your breath against your chest, mouth or nose? Maybe a flutter in your stomach? If so, what thoughts or feelings, if any, occurred at the same time as, or just before or after, the bodily sensations? My colleagues and I refer to these body-related thoughts in the stream of consciousness as ‘body-wandering’, a mental process that we think could play an important – yet overlooked – role in many people’s emotional wellbeing.
Part of the reason body-wandering has been overlooked for so long is that mind-wandering (or daydreaming) has long been conceptualised as a purely internal phenomenon, detached from the senses, the external world and the body. Many people adhere to a folk belief that when we daydream, we experience a kind of Cartesian split – we are ‘here in body, but not in mind’, as if the mind has become disconnected from its physiology. Thanks to research by the cognitive neuroscientist Jonathan Smallwood and his colleagues, we now know at least part of this is a misconception. Their recent work showed that when our minds wander, events in the external world, including sights and sounds, can still shape our inner thoughts.
In my recent work led by the cognitive neuroscientist Micah Allen at Aarhus University in Denmark, we wanted to expand on these findings to explore what happens when our wandering streams of consciousness are impacted by sensory events in the internal world – that is, bodily sensations including the heartbeat, breathing or gut sensation, sometimes known collectively as interoception.
We recruited more than 500 people and invited them to rest in a functional MRI scanner while we recorded their brain activity and several signals from the body, including their heartbeat, breathing and stomach activity. Immediately after the MRI scan (while still lying in the scanner), we surprised them with various questions about the thoughts they’d had during the brain scan, the emotional nature of these thoughts, and whether they’d had any thoughts related to bodily processes or specific organ sensations. Separately from the scan, we also asked them to complete questionnaires about their individual experiences of depression and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) symptoms.
At least for some people, body-wandering could have negative emotional consequences
Our study found that, while less frequent than thoughts about the past and future or about social experiences, our participants did report body-wandering – that is, having thoughts related to their internal bodily senses. What’s more, body-wandering was associated with a distinct neural signature involving networks responsible for bodily sensation and interoception. Specifically, the participants who reported more body-wandering and negative emotional thoughts showed greater connectivity between parts of the brain involved in sensing the body and in representing the internal organs. It seems we are not always so disconnected from our body when daydreaming as is often assumed. Of the body-related thoughts that our participants described, they mentioned those related to more easily noticeable sensations, such as breathing and movement, more often than they mentioned purely internal bodily processes such as the heartbeat or stomach activity.
We also found that our participants were more likely to be thinking about their bodily sensations when they were having more negative emotional thoughts. It is of course possible that this has to do with the experience of being in a brain scanner; perhaps some participants felt anxious in response to feeling their heart beating fast or worrying about needing the toilet. But the relationship between bodily thoughts and negative emotions isn’t limited to the lab. Earlier research by Giulia Poerio and her colleagues involved asking people to log their experiences using a smartphone as they went about their everyday lives. Consistent with our research, their study also found that attention to the body often occurs alongside negative emotions.
The pairing of body-wandering with negative emotion might reflect commonly reported embodied emotional experiences, such as noticing your stomach tighten, chest constrict or breathing and heartbeat quicken just before a stressful event (eg, a presentation, exam or interview). It also aligns with research in clinical settings showing heightened awareness of bodily sensations during negative emotional states. For example, compared with a healthy comparison group, patients with panic disorder report stronger heartbeat sensations after consuming stimulants such as caffeine. Similarly, people with anxiety disorders often show greater attention to their bodily signals. This suggests that, at least for some people, body-wandering could have negative emotional consequences.
However, it’s important to note that, although our participants reported more body-wandering while experiencing negative thoughts in the moment, we found that participants with higher depression scores – indicative of more persistent, long-term emotional difficulties – actually reported less time body-wandering in the scanner.
At first glance, this might seem surprising, but it’s consistent with research showing that patients with major depressive disorder often have a blunted awareness of their internal bodily sensations. This numbness to bodily sensations or even reduced bodily activity (such as lower heart rate variability) has been linked to the emotional numbness many people with depression describe, known as anhedonia.
Participants with higher ADHD symptoms reported high levels of mind-wandering, but low levels of body-wandering
This doesn’t mean people with depression have quiet minds. Quite the opposite: depression is often associated with more mind-wandering, especially in a negative pattern sometimes called rumination. These depressive repetitive thought cycles are often centred on past regrets or stuck on self-critical narratives. Our findings echo this: participants with higher depression scores were more likely to daydream about the past or the future, while being less likely to include their body in those inner thoughts.
We also found that our participants with higher ADHD symptoms reported high levels of mind-wandering, but low levels of body-wandering. This aligns with previous findings that both clinically diagnosed individuals and those with higher self-reported ADHD symptoms tend to have a reduced ability to perceive their internal bodily sensations. Indeed, some suggest that ADHD is linked to a diminished ability to detect and interpret bodily cues, which may contribute to having more attentional lapses and trouble regulating emotions.
One possible explanation for our observation that people with higher depression or ADHD symptoms experience reduced body-wandering could involve the body’s autonomic nervous system: the part of us that manages vital functions such as heart rate, breathing and digestion. In particular, ADHD has been linked to reduced activity in the autonomic system, leading to a lower level of bodily activity, known as physiological arousal.
Indeed, in our study, people with higher depression or ADHD scores showed reduced bodily activity across cardiac, respiratory and stomach signals. This reduction in physiological arousal could shape the content of mind-wandering thoughts. Across all our participants, when people were in a state of reduced bodily activity, they were more likely to experience mind-wandering. In contrast, participants in states of higher bodily arousal were more likely to body-wander. This suggests our levels of physiological arousal could play a regulatory role, potentially helping guide our attention either toward the body, or away from the body into abstract thought. A disruption in this balance could contribute to symptoms of ADHD or depression, prompting excessive mind-wandering (of a self-referential, ruminative nature) alongside reduced body-wandering.
Taken all together, our work and the research of others suggests that, rather than being separate entities, the body and mind are deeply intertwined, covarying with our thought patterns and emotional experiences – and, far from being purely subjective, this is reflected in patterns of connectivity in the brain. While body-related thoughts may increase during temporary states of emotional distress, a lack of bodily thought and low bodily activity may underlie more long-term emotional challenges in conditions such as ADHD and depression.
What might all of this mean for you? Take a moment to think about your own repeating patterns of thought. When your attention drifts, do you tend to mostly mind-wander into abstract thought, perhaps replaying exciting past events, worrying about the future, or losing focus during tasks at work or around the house? Or do you also body-wander? Do you notice your breath, your heartbeat or your stomach?
Our findings suggest that your answer to these questions might reflect your deeper emotional and attentional tendencies. You might find that when you’re feeling stressed or overwhelmed, your thoughts incorporate your fast heartbeat, sweating, or shaking bodily sensations, and maybe these encourage more negative thoughts in the moment. Conversely, perhaps you find yourself frequently daydreaming or struggling to stay focused, yet you barely notice your body at all. In this case, it’s possible that checking in with your body more often could help your attentional focus and wellbeing.
Looking ahead, I hope that understanding these mind-body dynamics further can contribute towards more tailored mental health interventions that consider personal differences in bodily focus and cognitive styles. A research priority is to determine a causal pattern between body-wandering, physiological arousal and mental health – hinted at but not confirmed by our recent correlational research. Most importantly, I hope our work invites a change in perspective so that we recognise mind-wandering not as an escape from the body but as something fundamentally shaped by and intermixed with it, with many implications for our emotional wellbeing.
