The Science · Field Note No. 09
The default-mode network, in plain English.
The brain's idle chatter — the voice that ruminates and builds the story of you — and what happens to it under psilocybin.
The default-mode network is the set of brain regions that hum along when you are not focused on a task — the source of mind-wandering, self-reference and rumination. In depression it tends to be overactive and rigid.
Under psilocybin, that network loosens. Researchers think this temporary flexibility is part of why a single guided session can shift entrenched patterns. Here is what the imaging actually shows, and where the open questions still are.
