Using Stillness to Improve Memory Consolidation

Hi, I'm Wendy Zucker man and this is Science Versus . Today on the show, we're pitting facts against feeling bored . Across the internet, people are embracing being bored. Rawdogging boredom for one hour. Rawdogging one hour straight. No phone, no TV, no music, no moving, no sleeping for an hour straight. That's right, they're raw dogging boredom. There's all these videos of people recording themselves sitting on the floor of their bedroom doing basically nothing, in some cases, for hours. And why are they doing this? Raw dogging boredom. The problem is we've created a way of living where you do not need to be bored at all. And the second you feel bored, you grab your phone. Like people like to say, oh, I'm just just I can't be bored. I'm the type of person who always has to be doing something, right? That's justifying the addiction. Influences are telling us that we need to push back against this addiction and embrace boredom like a lost art. They say that being bored is actually good for us. And it could inspire us to be more imaginative and creative. We kind of treat boredom as if it's something to fix. But what if I tell you that boredom is actually the starting point of creativity? Einstein and Newton got their biggest ideas when they were bored and doing nothing . So would we all be Einstein's if we just raw dogged some boredom. Today on the show, the power of being bored. What exactly is going on in our brains when we're bored? And could we really supercharge our minds if we just embraced a bit of boredom. When it comes to boredom, there's a lot of boredom. And then there's science. Science versus boredom will be coming up just after the break. This episode of Science versus is presented by Amazon Health AI. Guys, we gotta talk about your secret late-night internet searches. You know the ones: bumpy leg rash, hair loss, itchy bum. Trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers. We all do it, but does it always work? Well, you could try Amazon Health AI. It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24-7. So, call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful . This episode is brought to you by Amazon Health AI. Guys, we gotta talk about your secret late-night internet searches. You know the ones. Bumpy leg rash, hair loss, itchy bum. Trying to figure out your body by endlessly searching for answers. We all do it, but does it always work? Well, you could try Amazon Health AI. It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24-7. So, call off the search. Amazon Health AI is here. Healthcare just got less painful. Welcome back. I'm Wendy Zuckerman. Today we are digging into the science on boredom. And to tell me all about it, here's producer Michelle Dang. Hey Wendy. Hello, Michelle. How do you feel about your boredom levels? Are you bored right now? No. I'm never bored when I'm talking to you. So when I hear people online talking about this, I I do find myself nodding along. Because I don't know, I don't feel that bored anymore. But I am one of those people who are always picking up my phone to look at something. So Yeah. How do you feel? Have you been bored lately? Um, I do worry that by constantly shoving things in my brain, you know, whether that's work , mindless scrolling, it just it sometimes it does feel like you're literally just jamming your brain full of things. It's just this constant stimulation. And sometimes it really does feel like my brain is just saying, no, I'm too full right now . And it just wants to go and just be empty. And I don't let it be bored and empty. So I'm very excited to know what is going on in my brain that is that feel ing of just be still. Yeah, I wanted to know about that too. So we're going to dig into your brain on boredom. And to start, I talked to a cognitive neuroscientist named Professor James Dankert from the University of Waterloo in Canada . Great. And James and a colleague actually did a study looking exactly at this, the brain on boredom. So let me tell you about what they did. So they stuck 10 people into an FMR I machine and proceeded to bore the crap out of them. Which isn't hard in an FMRI. It's a boring space. That's true. But this is like a little step further. So listen to this. Okay. So to do that we had them watch an eight minute video of two guys hanging laundry. That's really quite effective at making people bored. Do you want to see pictures of what it looked like? Oh shot . Oh oh my god, that video that that screenshot of the video of two guys doing laundry I don't know why but it looks even more boring than I had imagined. I think because I was picturing the guys outside doing laundry on a sunny day. Uh-huh. But actually they're just inside a house. They look so bored. Oh yeah. I would hate that. And this was a like a four-minute clip that was on loop. They got to watch it twice inside the machine. And then they had their brains do other stuff too. For example, they had the participants watch an interesting video instead. It was a clip from BBC's planet Earth, actually, with you know beautiful landscapes, music, a sea turtle, all that jazz. Yes. Yes. I've seen it. It's uh incredibly interesting. Yes. And then James and his colleague, they looked at all their brains in these different states to see what was going on. Mm-hmm. And what James noticed when people were bored were changes in a couple of systems in the brain. So let me start with this particular one that was all lit up. It's known as the default mode network. And this is a network of brain areas that is more active when there is no external task for you to do. So people will also o also call it an off task net network. It's active in things like daydreaming or mind wandering. It's active when you sort of prospectively think about the future. Have you heard about the default mode network before? Yeah, yeah. It's interesting because I guess I associate boredom with thinking of nothing. But you're right, it's more when you've got when you're just watching guys doing laundry , your mind just wanders into its default state. Yeah. Exactly. Here's James. It just turned out that video was so mind-numbingly dull that they disengaged from it and activated this default network. And then what happened to the brains in the group that got to watch that interesting video with the turtles and planet Earth? Yeah, so uh in that group, it looked like the DMN was less active , so they didn't see the same pattern. Probably because there was a bunch of great stuff to focus on in that clip. Aha , that makes sense. So does it matter that whether the default mode network is on or off. Well, the people online love to clamor about the DMN. Uh-huh. They say it's a really important system in our brain, and that part is true. We know that the DMN plays a role in our sense of self. Like it's active when we self-reflect, when we think about the past or the future or when we process our emotions. All this stuff happens when we're just resting too. So is the default mode network always good when it's activated because I feel like sometimes when my mind wanders it just goes back to these kinda negative thoughts often revolving around the theme of you're not good enough in some way. Yeah, so this is the flip side of this. It doesn't make sense to claim that activating the DMN is always good and that we should just be, you know, sitting in a room shutting everything out for hours at a time. Right. For example, an overactive DMN can be linked to things like ruminating and negative thoughts. And of course we know that we don't always think good thoughts when our mind is wandering. Yes, of course, right. Yeah, you stop watching this video about laundry, you get bored. Who knows where your mind is gonna go when it taps into this default mode network? Interesting. What else did James find in this study? Yeah, so while James saw the DMN perk up when people were bored, he also noticed this other part of the brain that showed less activity. It's called the insular cortex, and it's part of something called the salience network. I associate the insular cortex with understanding what's happening in our own body, feeling pain. Yeah, yeah. And it also like plays a role in in figuring out what's out there, like in our environment versus what what we're feeling inside. Aaron Powell , Jr. Nothing that would would help you pursue a goal. Oh, and during boredom, that part of the brain dialed down. Yeah, exactly. So it dialed down, but it's also almost lying in wait for ways to escape the bored om. Cause we know from other research that this part of the brain lights up and gets more active when people are given the opportunity to escape the boredom. Like when they're presented something that's actually interesting for them to do . So James says that this insular cortex. This part of your your your brain, this network is trying to say, okay, I've just been bored to death. I gotta find something. And so here's here's where we're going with this. Here's the punchline. Yeah. Before my insular cortex completely switches off, Michelle, let's get to the punchline . So the idea here is that your brain is signaling you to find like whatever you can to escape the monotony of bored om. Okay. Because Wendy, like our brains do not like being bored. And and scientists actually define boredom as a negative thing, like a negative state of mind. When we're bored, we want something that that matters to us, but we don't want anything that's currently available to us. And so that's why boredom is a sort of, it's a motivating emotion, because it's calling you to find that thing that's going to work. But it's also an agitated sort of restless feeling because clearly if you're bored, you're not satisfying that desire to be engaged. And you know, some people will go to huge lengths to avoid boredom. Like there's this famous study where scientists looked at whether people would rather shock themselves than sit around being bored in a room. Yes, I have heard of this study. But what I I never read it though. What did they actually do? Yeah, it's pretty fun. Uh so the researchers had these people sit in a room with nothing to do for fifteen minutes. Uh-huh. And they had electrodes on their ankles which were connected to a button they could press to activate this sho ck. And when people tested out the shock, guess what? Most of them said the shock sucked and they didn't like it. Yes. However, these same people who didn't like it, 40% of them shocked themselves at least once when they got into the room. 40% within 15 minutes of being bored. Yes. Of sitting in an empty room, almost half of them shocked themselves. And it wasn't out of curiosity. They knew what the shock was like and they knew they didn't like it. Right. And Wendy, there was somebody who shocked himself 1 90 times. That I mean she'll they they liked it , that person. Right. Probably. Okay . And other studies have since repeated this, showing that many of us would rather shock ourselves or do something against our own interests when we're bored. Because I guess boredom I mean people do we do crazy things when we're bored. I I re remember this study from a while ago that asked people to name all the reasons they have sex and one of them was bored. Which isn't crazy, but I mean I've had friends who sleep with their exes because they're bored. You know, they'll just text their ex someone they actively do not like. Yeah. Because they're bored. Yeah. So then the question is. So we know boredom is a state our brain doesn't like and it were we will do things that are bad for us in order to escape the boredom . But should we persevere in that bored state? Will it give us some benefit? Yeah, Wonnie, that that's my next question. If our brains get bored , could that lead us to the land of creativity? Exactly. That is coming up after the break. Right. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zetbound Terzepitide may be able to help. Zetbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced cal orie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. ZEPBOund is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. 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And let's be honest. Something that keeps everything looking smooth. That's where Vanity Fair lingerie comes in. Their new smoothing wireless bra has four-way stretch fabric for all-over smoothing, soft, lightly lined cups for a natural shape, and no wire comfort that lasts all day. All-over smooth, all-day comfort, vanity fair lingerie. Find yours at Tar get today . Welcome back. Today on the show we're talking about boredom. Is this a state that we should be aspiring to . Michelle Dang, a producer here at Science Versus, is about to tell us whether being bored can actually inspire creativity. So Gannett. Yeah, that is the big claim we're hearing from the internet people that boredom will unlock and push you into creativity. Yes. To get some science on this, we need to meet Professor Gihan Park from Korea University. She's an organizational psychologist, and Guihan got interested in boredom about a decade ago when she was finding herself stuck in some pretty boring meetings. It's it was usually the faculty meetings that really boring. Nothing that interests me and it's just passing time. Something like that. Very uh boring tone of voice and monotonous. Uh-huh. You cannot escape. Like you you just feel stuck . It's true It's so true. Yeah, yeah. And Guihan would notice something about how she was spending time in these moments. Uh she was picking up her pen and Doodling and then writing new ide as, oh okay, so planning some new new things, new research ideas, blah blah blah. I can like occupy myself by doing it instead of feeling the torture. Oh yeah. She's able to switch her brain into a productive state rather than kicking herself in the shins under the table. So sometimes she'd use that boring time to work out solutions for problems she was having or finding new ways to do an experiment. Great. And she's she started wondering like, does this happen to everyone? And particularly like if we make people bored, can we spark creativity? So what Gihan did is she got together this big group of students and to get them bored and see if creativity fell at the other side, she didn't show them a video of dudes doing laundry. She did something a little different . She gave people a huge bowl of beans, and these are beans in two different colors. Told them to sit there and separate the beans out by color . And I'm sure this sounds familiar to you, Wendy, because I asked you to do this experiment too. Yes, you did. Yeah, so I asked you to record yourself doing it. So here's a bit of that. Pour both beans into the largest bowl, mix them well together. Start a timer for 30 minutes. Sort the beans one at a time by moving all the red beans into your second bowl . Okay . Here are my red beans going in. Chickpeas going in . Okay, now I'm gonna mix them up Time starts now and to make it even worse, Guihan designed it so that you did it. Just one by one, using one hand. So that it's uh monotonous. So Guihan did this with over 50 students in a big hall, and here's what happened. So so they they do engage in one by one and then after five minutes you can feel that wh the entire room was filled with boredom. Could you could you see the boredom on their faces. Oh yes. Yes. Yes. They were really poor. They they become really slow. You can see their actions getting really slow. And then they were not like they lose their emotions on the face, right? The numbing numbing kind of face . When they you had that numbing kind of face by the end too. Oh yeah. But here's some tape of you if you've forgotten it. I forgot the rule about the just using one hand for a moment. And then I was back using one hand . Now I'm just kind of throwing them in like playing basketball. Gosh, it feels never ending though. Cause they're d am I really gonna separate them complet ely ? Oh yeah. Yeah, I'm getting bored just listening back to myself. It's funny, I didn't know. I didn't know if I I was bored, but my mind kept wondering. It kept hitting that default state where I started thinking about other things in my life. And then I but my hand would keep blah blah blah blah blah. Yeah, so that was the boredom arm. And of course there was a control group too. Gui Han had another group that she didn't want to be bored, so she had them make art with the beans on a white piece of paper for the thirty minutes. So after the thirty minutes of either sorting beans or making bean art was up . Then came the creativity part. Everyone in the experiment had to answer a prompt, which I made you read out loud. Right. Imagine a hypothetical situation in which person A is two hours late for a work meeting. List all of the feasible and justifiable reasons person A could use to account for being late so that person A would not be perceived negatively by their teammates. There are no right or wrong respons es. Please generate as many ideas as possible . Okay . Um tamar tam ma and five minutes that's go . Um broken leg. Broken arm. I mean hell. Broken ankle. Broken neck. Uh I think I wanna run here this it feels like cheating though. Helped older person with the bins, but then they trapped you. UTI . The UTI is b- yeah, that's bad. Really big fight with partner. You found out your partner cheated on you. You gave birth. Then they should just be happy you came to the meeting at all. Rhinoceros incident when at the zoo. Because you Yeah. Like a rhinoceros maybe pooed on you again . Wendy, you came up with a lot of good ideas. Did I do okay? I always feel like I want to win. Did I win, Michelle? Compared to the study, I think you went above and beyond with how many you came up with. Thanks for thirty-five? 35? Yeah. What did other people come up with? Oh yeah, there were some really great responses that they got too. Oh alien, uh alien just visited my house, so I need to deal with him, you know, for w for a couple of minutes and then I send him home. Or oh birds on my face. So I have to go back home and then change my whole clothing and stuff. I feel like I was on the someone sh on you sort of uh wasn't a a rhino? Yeah. I feel like me and that person who said that would have really gelled. For a bird shitting on your face, you don't get two hours of leeway, right? You can clean that off. It's a pretty bad day though. It's true. On the face. But what were you doing at a zoo before work? Hmm, good question. Okay, but then the the question is, right, of this whole experiment is had I done the creative task. Had I instead made an art project out of beans? Would I have been even more creative? Or did bored om inspire creativity? What did she find? Yeah, so when Gihan looked at all the data across the groups, she found that yes, people in the boredom group came out with more unique and creative responses than the people who were making being art. And just like you, they were also able to come up with a lot more ideas than the art group. Huh. I found the significant finding that Goldom actually can increase the creative performance. I was like, oh, okay. Interesting. That is interesting, because what it f it did feel like after sorting the beans for half an hour, I my brain was really keen to find something interesting. Oh. And then I could grab onto this pro new project of all the silly excuses I could come up with. It was like it was like roaring. It was like let me out of here. It was raw dogging almost, yeah. Yeah. So boredom can inspire creativity? Well, maybe. Other research into this has been a bit mixed. Like some studies find boredom boosts creativity and others don't. And there was a review that said, quote, no clearly negative or positive relations hip could be pinpointed between boredom and creativity. End quote. What a boring result . But we might have an explanation for why it felt like the boredom worked for you. And fe els helpful to other people too. So Gihan did another version of this bean experiment, but this time she also gave them personality tests . And she found that bored people were more likely to be creative if they ranked higher in certain traits. Uh-huh. Things like need for cognition and openness to experience. Need for cognition. Do some people not have a need for cognition. I think some people have a more of a need for cognition. Okay. All right. I guess I have a high need for c ognition. Um so what is then where do you land on this? Boredom , we clearly don't like it, but is it good or bad? Should I should I try to be bored more? Well, even though Gihan found some potential benefit for creativity. Oallver, it's it's not clear that boredom is the state that you want your mind to be in. As we talked about, it especially doesn't feel great. Here's James again. I've had people before say to me, I don't mind being bored, I like being bored, you know, bor boredom's fine. And what you find out when you probe them is that they don't, they're not talking about boredom at all. What they're talking about is relaxation or disconnection. They're talking about sort of disengaging from their fromrom the thrust and parry of their everyday lives, or they're disengaging from social networks, or they're disengaging from devices or whatever. And they're doing very little. They're not doing much. And they say, Yeah, that's fine, I like it. It's like, well, yeah, okay, that's great, but it's not boredom. We don't need more boredom. We just need more intentional engagement. Or intentional disengagement. Yes. From the thrust and parry of life. Yeah, do you like that? I do, I do. Mm-hmm. So is James says exactly that. Like intentional engagement could be choosing to veg out. It could be choosing to relax. Right. And then there is this difference. You want a roar dog disconnection from the thrust and parry. You think we could get that as a hashtag going? Okay. Hashtag raw dog disconnection. Yes . Yes. Is that right? Yes. Apologies for the incredibly 2010 reference at this point . But away from that, Wendy, I found some science that shows that there is some benefit to just letting your brain rest , particularly with memory. So letting your brain rest can actually help you remember stuff that you learn. Oh. So scientists will give people a list of words or a story to remember and then have them rest afterward with nothing to do. Or they'll have them do something mentally engaging like play a game or scroll social media. And when they quizzed them afterward, they found that the people who were giving time to rest after learning actually have better recall. Oh, that's cool. And feels very relatable. And we think this is because when you learn something, your brain creates a new neural pathway. But when you give your brain a chance to rest, it lets that pathway repeat back and forth over and over again and consolidate that information. Even five to ten minutes of rest can boost your memory in this way. Oh , that is cool picturing our brain doing that. It does, it sounds a little bit like meditation. Well, in some of the research, they literally just tell people to sit in a chair and relax, which is a bit different to meditation techniques. Okay . Are you getting bored? Not yet. Okay, no, me neither . What about now? I'm good. Alright. So here's what I've learned about boredom, Michelle. Yes. Please tell me. Boredom is a state that your brain doesn't like and that you don't have to persevere through in order to get benefits . Probably what a lot of us are seeking right now is just stillness, quiet , peace . And get it get off like the hamster wheel. Get off the hamster wheel. Raw dog . That state of mind. You meant raw dog disconnection from the thrust and parry. Raw dog disconnection from the thrust and parry . Alright, thanks, Michelle. Thank you, Wendy . That's science versus . And if you want to get in touch with us, let us know what you thought of the episode. You can pop a comment if you're listening to this on Spotify or you can find us on Instagram, science underscore VS. I'm on TikTok at WendyZook. Come and say hello. Before we get to the citations, we have a special segment for you where I answer questions from you guys, our listeners. So here it is Today's Ask Wendy Anything, Ask Me Anything, is brought to you by Amazon Health AI. Amazon Health AI is here to stop at the late night internet help searches. It can connect your symptoms with your medical history to offer personalized care 24-7. So call off the search. Here to ask me some questions is senior producer Rose Rimler. Hey Rose. Hey. Okay, so someone who goes by T on TikTok has asked, How do you protect your mental health with science deniers? Ooh, thanks. That sounds like a very caring question. When I am feeling down, it can make me feel quite down. Yeah, I mean I ri I I can really struggle with this. I particularly struggle becausecause I think on this show on Science Versus we work really hard to get the facts out to people and it's diffic ult to watch as other voices are louder and talking nonsense but have the appearance of being legitimate. Do you know what I mean? Whether they're wearing a lab coat or using big fancy words. Maybe they're even aligned to a fancy university and yet I still know they're talking rubbish. Mm-hmm. I really struggle with that. I guess the question is how do I protect myself? I guess I just focus on what we can do, which is we pump out good information that we trust. And on a good day, I just focus on that. Sounds good. We got another one from the painting nihilist on Instagram. What was the last movie you watched in the theater and what did you think of it? The substance with Demi Moore. Memorable movie. Memorable. And it was even more memorable because I watched it on a Monday morning , and it was just me and this other guy there in an otherwise completely empty theater, and it's a body horror.