In a recent interview titled The Science of a Wandering Mind, with Knowable Magazine, Jonathan Smallwood, Professor of Psychology at Queen’s University, Canada, said he pondered on a few questions on thoughts — as he answered how and why he decided to study mind wandering.

Theoretical explorations of those questions are below.

Where do they come from?

Thoughts emerge as the uniform unit or uniform quantity of sensory processing or integration in the thalamus — and olfactory bulb for smell.

This means that relay centers in the brain that neuroscience studies have shown to include the substantia nigra, reticular formation, nucleus of the solitary tract, or NTS, are places where there is processing or integration into uniformity — for both internal and external stimuli.

So, it is like inputs come in various forms from different sources, but when they get to those landing spots, they are processed into a uniformity [thought] that becomes what can be used in higher-order regions of the brain.

This postulation means that the car in the external world is a thought version to the brain. Thinking about the car is done in the same version as what it exists as, to the brain, without further conversion. Words, pictures, clothes, music and all exist as thought forms to the memory. Also, internal senses from the liver, kidneys and so on, are also in this same form.

Relay centers also do something else: they separate thoughts into prioritization and pre-prioritization. This means that all thoughts to be relayed are mostly pre-prioritized, they have similar properties in that state, but they don’t get the most attention when in the memory.

Internal organs are working all the time. There are different sensory streams all the time, from the external, but they don’t get prioritized. Just one gets prioritized at any single moment.

Though prioritization for all thought versions happens per cycle, which, for many internal senses, occurs during sleep.

It is this prioritization that determines attention. But what often happens is that interchanges between prioritization and pre-prioritization are fast and numerous. So just one thing on the mind is prioritized at any moment, but there are always switches. Someone can be typing on a keypad, looking at the screen, confirming the sentences and so on, but it is just one thing leading at any single moment.

What is said to be involuntary or autonomic are actually classes of pre-prioritization with possibility to switch to prioritization.

Prioritization and pre-prioritization continue in memory areas.

A recent paper, published in Nature, Natural switches in behaviour rapidly modulate hippocampal coding, explained that “an amazingly fast switch in neural coding not just within the same brain area, but in the same neurons.”

Why do they come?

Thoughts are packets of knowing. It is in that form or equivalent that the brain takes hold of things. The brain knows the liver is there and knows its limits or extents [regulations] but does so in a form of thought.

Without thoughts it will be difficult for humans to know. If there were no thoughts, then there would have to be something else as equal.

“There are physical objects with molecules but they cannot know, which means they don’t have consciousness. There are others with cells with limited forms of knowing, like plants. To think and feel are states of knowledge [because it is knowing that makes it possible to think and feel].

The [thought version of] the smartphone is known. It can be thought about. If the screen breaks, sadness can be felt: knowing what it is and knowing what is felt.”

Why do thoughts persist even if they interfere with attention to the here and now?

It is said that after senses are processed or integrated in the thalamus, they are relayed to the cerebral cortex for interpretation. Interpretation is theorized to be knowing, feeling and reaction.

Knowing is memory. Memory has stores or packages or clusters—with relay sequences—holding thought or their form.

There are small stores [micro] and there are large stores [macro].

Micro stores contain the smallest possible unique information on anything. This means that several kinds of doors or sounds, or baritone voices or soft voices are known, but a micro store contains the smallest possible unique information on any specific one.

Macro stores collect similarities between two or more micro stores. This means that instead of having duplications, there are large stores or groups with commonality.

Macro stores have slices with feel-like, or what it means to feel-like something even when it is not currently experienced.

During activities and interactions, micro stores are constantly traveling to macro stores for what to remember, how to interact with things and so on.

Thoughts from sensory processing go into a small store in memory and heads straight to a large store to define what should be known in the moment about anything. Some incoming stores locate resident micro stores on the unique information, but mostly the stores travel there directly.

It is the transport of small stores to large stores all the time that defines mind-wandering. It is what also defines experiences, where destinations make determinations.

This also means that when medications work, they change an experience through memory stores — which may then affect an array that includes small and large stores for other functions, causing side effects.

The macro store has a principal spot where just one can go, where it dominates the most. It is where the trauma macro store goes, to become particularly terrible.

When people abuse substances, they do so to change stores in memory location, for experiences.

Mind wandering is the relay of thought in stores to memory locations.

Mind Wandering

Can be described as transport of stores—across memory locations—on regular or non-regular sequence rails.

All mind wandering is in the form of thought. It is the thought version of anything, in stores, across memory locations that go to large stores in mind wandering.

Some stores have an early split or go-before, which is what is called predictions, but mind wandering is a memory process.