Default Mode Network

The Default Mode Network (DMN) occupies a pivotal position in the depth-psychology corpus, functioning as the neurological substrate where the most distinctively human psychic operations converge: self-referential processing, temporal integration of past and future, imagination, narrative construction, and the phenomenology of selfhood itself. Barrett situates the DMN as the origin point of conceptual prediction and the ‘self system,’ arguing that its degradation — as in Alzheimer’s disease — entails commensurate dissolution of self-experience. Damasio reads the DMN as the large-scale network enabling narrative integration of experience, linking it to the architectonics of subjectivity. Carhart-Harris treats the DMN’s organized activity as the neurological seat of the ego, such that its destabilization under psychedelics or primary states occasions regression to more entropic, less constrained modes of consciousness — a position with direct implications for psychoanalytic and Jungian theory. Alcaro and Carta trace the DMN’s resting-state activity to evolutionary instincts of imagination, opening the network to neuro-psychoanalytic appropriation. Siegel foregrounds the DMN’s integrative function in empathy and self-awareness, noting that its impaired integration underlies disorders from bipolar spectrum to PTSD. Menon positions the DMN in dynamic antagonism with the salience and central executive networks, a triad whose balance governs attention, affect regulation, and psychopathology. Across the corpus, the DMN is never merely a ‘resting-state’ phenomenon but the neurological ground of psychological interiority.

In the library 20 passages

entry into primary states depends on a collapse of the normally highly organized activity within the default mode network (DMN) and a decoupling between the DMN and the medial temporal lobes

Carhart-Harris proposes that psychedelic and other primary states of consciousness are produced specifically by the disorganization of the DMN’s habitual structure and its severance from temporal-lobe coupling.

Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014thesis

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the default mode network has a general function: it allows you to simulate how the world might be different from the way it is right now. This includes remembering the past and imagining the future from different points of view.

Barrett argues that the DMN’s core function is temporal and perspectival simulation — an ‘experience simulator’ uniting past, present, and future in the service of social navigation and goal pursuit.

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017thesis

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a portion of the interoceptive network, called the default mode network, has been called the ‘self system.’ It consistently increases in activity during self-reflection. If you have atrophy in your default mode network, as happens in Alzheimer’s disease, you eventually lose your sense of self.

Barrett identifies the DMN as the neurological substrate of selfhood, demonstrating that its structural integrity is prerequisite to the continuity of self-experience.

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017thesis

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the DMN is so highly and persistently active, is that it receive regular endogenous input from internal drivers… its enduring presence fits comfortably with the idea that it is the seat of the ego

Carhart-Harris directly identifies the DMN with Freud’s concept of the ego, arguing that the network’s persistent activity reflects the continuous presence of self-awareness in healthy waking consciousness.

Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014thesis

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the DMN is characterized by high intrinsic activity during resting states with visual fixating or with eye closed that decreases when subjects engage in goal-directed tasks

Alcaro and Carta establish the DMN’s defining empirical signature — maximal spontaneous activity at rest, suppression during task engagement — as the neurophysiological basis for their neuro-psychoanalytic theory of imagination.

Alcaro, Antonio; Carta, Stefano, The ‘Instinct’ of Imagination: A Neuro-Ethological Approach to the Evolution of the Reflective Mind and Its Application to Psychotherapy, 2019thesis

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A prediction originates as a multisensory summary, representing the goal of the concept, in a portion of the interoceptive network known as the default mode network.

Barrett locates the DMN as the generative origin of conceptual prediction within her predictive-coding model, framing it not as a storage site but as the initiator of forward-projected simulations.

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017thesis

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DMN regions are centers of dense connectivity, implying that they serve as important connector hubs for information integration and routing… this functional centrality of the DMN is not shared by other brain networks

Carhart-Harris establishes the DMN’s unique architectural status as the apex hub of brain-wide information integration, distinguishing it from all other functional networks in terms of hierarchical priority.

Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014thesis

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The DMN is involved in a wide array of processes, including self-awareness and empathy, lending it a foundational role in insight into one’s inner self, and the inner mental lives of other individuals.

Siegel frames the DMN as the neurological basis of both introspective self-awareness and interpersonal empathy, and shows that its failure to integrate with broader brain function underlies psychiatric disorders including bipolar disorder and PTSD.

Siegel, Daniel J., The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are, 2020thesis

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The process related to the integration of experiences requires the narrative-like ordering of images and the coordination of those images with the subjectivity process. This is achieved by association cortices of both cerebral hemispheres arranged in large-scale networks, of which the default mode network is the best-known example.

Damasio situates the DMN as the preeminent large-scale network responsible for narrative integration of experience and the constitution of subjectivity.

Damasio, Antonio R., The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018supporting

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the default mode network (DMN), which includes the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). During the performance of cognitively demanding tasks, the CEN typically shows increases in activation, whereas the DMN shows decreases in activation.

Menon anatomically specifies the DMN and establishes its reciprocal deactivation relationship with the central executive network, which is the functional basis of the salience network’s switching role.

Menon, Vinod, Saliency, switching, attention and control: a network model of insula function, 2010supporting

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Marcus Raichle called attention to the fact that when subjects are at rest, not engaging in a task requiring focused attention

Damasio credits Raichle’s discovery of heightened resting-state activity in the posteromedial cortices as foundational to understanding the DMN’s relationship to self-relevant and internally directed processing.

Damasio, Antonio, Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain, 2010supporting

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the DMN is associated with introspective thought and a dorsal frontoparietal attention network (DAN) is associated with visuospatial attention… a network of regions that are consistently activated during goal-directed cognition.

Carhart-Harris contrasts the DMN’s introspective function with task-positive networks, predicting that in primary states these normally anticorrelated systems lose their orthogonality.

Carhart-Harris, Robin, The Entropic Brain: A Theory of Conscious States Informed by Neuroimaging Research with Psychedelic Drugs, 2014supporting

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methylphenidate decreases blood flow to the ventral anterior cingulate cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, and inferior parietal cortex in adults with ADHD in direct proportion to improved performance on cognitive tasks, which has been attributed to an improved efficiency of neural processing in these regions and the reduced mind-wandering induced by stimulants

Peterson demonstrates that psychostimulant suppression of DMN activity in ADHD correlates directly with cognitive performance gains, linking DMN dysregulation to the disorder’s attentional pathology.

Peterson, Bradley S., An fMRI Study of the Effects of Psychostimulants on Default-Mode Processing During Stroop Task Performance in Youths With ADHD, 2009supporting

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enhanced salience–central executive and salience–default network coupling may reflect deficits in context-dependent engagement and disengagement of cognitive systems important for attending to salient external stimuli or internal mental events

Yang frames aberrant DMN-salience network coupling in ADHD as a failure of context-sensitive network switching, and shows that stimulant treatment normalizes this coupling in proportion to symptom relief.

Yang, Zhen, Neural correlates of symptom improvement following stimulant treatment in adults with ADHDsupporting

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The processing is further assisted by support networks such as the default mode network and by normal modulation signals hailing from brain-stem nuclei and basal forebrain nuclei.

Damasio positions the DMN as an auxiliary support network for multisensory integration across association cortices, complementing specialized early processing regions.

Damasio, Antonio R., The strange order of things life, feeling, and the making, 2018supporting

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Many studies seem to show that the default mode and salience networks work in opposition: a brain can be in an internal mode, with the default mode network ‘activated’ and the salience network ‘deactivated’

Barrett describes the documented reciprocal relationship between the DMN and salience network, wherein internal mentation and external alerting occupy opposing poles of a functional axis.

Barrett, Lisa Feldman, How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain, 2017supporting

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The brain on art: Intense aesthetic experience activates the default mode network.

Menninghaus cites Vessel and colleagues’ finding that intense aesthetic experience — particularly art that ‘reaches within’ — selectively activates the DMN, linking self-referential processing to aesthetic absorption.

Menninghaus, Winfried, What Are Aesthetic Emotions?, 2015aside

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Related terms