This is Scientific Americans, 60-Second Science, I'm Karen Hopkins.

It happens to us all.

You might be reading a book or washing the dishes, or maybe even listening to a podcast.

When suddenly, you realize your mind was miles away.

Well, if you've ever wondered why the mind wanders, you might want to pay attention to this.

A new study shows that localized brainwaves, resembling those present when we fall asleep,

are associated with brief interruptions in our stream of consciousness.

The findings appear in the journal Nature Communications.

Thomas Andrean, of the Paris Brain Institute, grew interested in the neural mechanisms that

underlight daydreaming while on an extended road trip with his wife.

We travel for a year of a three-continence by car, accumulating long hours on difficult

roads.

As time rolled slowly by, Andrean found his attention would stray from the road ahead.

Indeed, somewhere deep in Patagonia, I flipped a car on the roof, just because I was thinking

about something else and reacted badly when getting back to the real world.

Well, no one was harmed, but the incident did make Andrean wonder.

Whilst going on in our brain, when our mind wanders.

It actually happens more than you might think.

According to some account, we spend up to half of a waking life mind wandering.

And it happens most frequently when we're tired or fatigued, at that point.

We can enter states in which part of the brain will show an activity resembling sleep,

despite the rest of our brain being clearly awake.

...