As a soon-to-be neurogeneticist, I'm really glad I read this. Thank you.

I worked as an RA in Schooler's lab studying meditation, mind-wandering, and creativity. I'm glad to see they're still making progress on that front. Learned a lot there; Schooler is an endlessly interesting guy.

About that part on the simultaneous activation of the executive and default networks: it looks like the fronto-parietal executive network gets enlisted by the DMN when general unconscious task unrelated cognition develops into conscious internal narrative. To follow up on another line of reasoning mentioned in this article, Zoran Josipovic at NYU has shown some preliminary evidence that the DMN and task positive network are also simultaneously activated during certain meditation induced "non-dual" states.

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