silence the inner noise

Let’s start with a short and simple exercise. It will only take one minute of your time. The exercise consists of sitting quietly, closing your eyes, and thinking about nothing.

It sounds simple but is incredibly difficult. Even if we reduced the exercise time to 10 seconds or your life depended on it, you would hardly perform better. Everyone has a mind that behaves this way. That’s just how the mind is.

When we ask people what is going on in their heads during these times of idleness, it is not nothing. They report mind wandering, often about what concerns them. The complex sequence of thoughts happens quickly, automatically, and effortlessly. One thought evokes many others, and only a few are consciously registered. Most associative thinking happens silently below the threshold of consciousness. Especially under stress, as in sports, our brains perform at their best in associative thinking. At the same time, we want to rely on trained automatisms, let go of disruptive thoughts, and focus attentively on the activity. How difficult this is, every athlete, regardless of the sport, can confirm. What seems acceptable in training becomes a massive obstacle in competition.

Without new internal or external stimuli to capture our attention, our brain seems to become restless and starts generating its own noise. The human mind tends to wander and immerse itself in what is known as “stimulus-independent thinking.” People spend a lot of time thinking about things that are not happening around them, reflecting on past events, fantasizing about possible future scenarios, or thinking about things that will never happen. In fact, this type of thinking seems to be the brain’s default mode. While this ability is a remarkable evolutionary achievement that allows humans to learn, reflect, and plan, it has emotional costs and distracts us from the present.

The brain makes up only 2% of the body mass but consumes about 20% of the body’s metabolic energy. This energy consumption remains largely constant regardless of what we are doing—even when we are doing nothing. The additional energy load due to momentary task-related demands accounts for only a small percentage of the total energy budget. The brain appears to be as active when we relax as when we are under mental strain.

Certain brain regions show significantly increased activity during rest phases and routine actions, i.e., when no specific tasks requiring our focused attention are present. In these moments, we have mental resources available that we use for memories, reflections, and planning. We dive into the past, design future scenarios, or put ourselves in other situations or people.

For successful action in terms of evolution (survival and reproduction), this ability is highly advantageous, and that’s why we spend a lot of time doing it. However, when we are mentally engaged, we are not fully present, and only part of our attention is occupied with what we are currently doing.

The “Default Mode Network” (DMN) is the brain network along which our mind wanders when it wanders. It is active when we are not focusing on anything specific, supporting the mind-wandering between different times (past, present, future), processing emotional content, considering the thoughts and perspectives of others, and maintaining a narrative network that encompasses the story of who we think we are. The DMN continues to function when we sleep or even under light anesthesia.

It consists of discrete bilateral and symmetrical cortical areas. Mainly, these are the midline of the prefrontal cortex and the posterior cingulate cortex, while other brain regions have also been considered part of the DMN in some studies. For simplicity, we will not cover all specific regions in detail. If you are interested in the details of neuroanatomy, you will find more information in the literature list of this article.

The brain regions that form the structural core of the DMN are nodes that connect important structures in the brain, such as networks that control attention and emotional responses. It receives sensory information from the external world and the body and relays this information to key structures like the hypothalamus or the amygdala. This anatomical circuitry alone says much about the central role of the DMN as a sensory-visceromotor link related to social behavior, mood control, and motivation, all essential components of personality. There are also specific regions within the network responsible for self-referential judgments. The posterior cingulate cortex is a particularly interesting structure consistently associated with the memory of experiences.

So, when your thoughts drift during a sports competition, your attention suffers, your focus shifts regularly, and you evaluate your current performance, you can be sure that your DMN is particularly active.

As noted earlier, the DMN consists of a collection of brain regions that are less active when specific tasks requiring concentration and attention are performed. However, they become more active when a person is awake and not performing conscious activities. These can also be routine actions in sports.

Several studies have found the presence of anticorrelations between the Default Mode Network and “task-positive networks,” i.e., attention and control networks active when someone focuses on new, non-self-referential, goal-oriented tasks. While the brain performs an active task, the DMN areas calm down while the brain regions essential for this task are activated. The DMN reactivates when the mental task is completed. A fitting metaphor that comes to mind is “losing oneself in work,” indicating that the DMN has calmed down and the attention and control networks have taken over.

Healthy brain function is considered an adaptive balance between the Default Mode Network and the networks that control attention and executive functions. Depression, anxiety, stress, and attention deficit disorders are conditions characterized by decreased alertness and an increase in internal dialogue leading to negative thoughts. This is technically an inability to suppress the activity of the DMN. Stressed individuals show a reduced ability to deactivate the DMN and an increase in its baseline activity. This suggests that an inability to inhibit the DMN or switch from it to activatable attention networks leads to reduced cognitive performance. Therefore, the balance between activation and deactivation of the DMN is essential for maintaining healthy brain function, including executive functions of memory and attention.

Given the interrelationship between the DMN, mind-wandering, attention, and consequently athletic performance in training and competition, the question arises: Is it possible to specifically alter this network to focus more on the here and now and thus make an important contribution to our athletic performance?

Studies show that mental training can specifically influence the DMN. For example, meditation techniques aim to improve psychological skills such as attention, emotional control, body awareness, and self-perception. During such exercises, athletes learn to focus, observe their thoughts, emotions, and bodily sensations, and distinguish between them.

The essential nodes of the DMN are less active in meditators. This means they are less likely to mind-wander. The calming of these neural circuits begins as a state effect observable during or immediately after the exercise but, with consistent training, becomes a lasting trait along with reduced baseline activity in the DMN itself. Interestingly, even moderate training can lead to reduced activity in the DMN. Therefore, a new default mode is active both during meditation and at rest.

A second finding is that experienced meditators more effectively activate “task-positive” brain regions, such as those involved in working memory and cognitive control. This suggests that athletic performance not only means being less distracted but also includes the ability to become aware when you are not present and then redirect your attention. This is called meta-awareness and enables better control over thinking and attention. The networks of our brain can be more purposefully and consciously controlled. By practicing staying in the present moment, athletes can learn to engage less in their thoughts and direct their attention to the here and now.

Basic meditation instructions involve focusing on breathing. When our thoughts wander, we notice it, let them go, and redirect our conscious attention back to the breath. Following this is a simple and effective exercise to improve the function of the DMN. According to studies, 2 weeks of daily 20-minute training are sufficient for this—a manageable time investment that anyone can start immediately.

Although it sounds simple, breathing is an effective method to train important subsystems in the brain. Focusing on breathing is most strongly associated with activating the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (PFC) of the “central executive network” (CEN). Mind-wandering is associated with the DMN, and awareness of this drifting has been linked to activation in the so-called “salience network,” which is responsible for moderating between the DMN and CEN. Shifting attention back to focusing on the breath is again associated with regions in the CEN.

For beginners, this exercise means an interplay between full concentration and a wandering mind. A critical moment occurs when you suddenly realize that you are no longer following the breath: you become abruptly aware that you are not doing what you intended to do. This mental step has a neural equivalent: it activates and strengthens the connection between the dorsolateral PFC and the DMN. Initially conscious mechanisms increasingly become unconscious processes with practice. The mind, when it wanders again, calms down faster and more automatically. This applies in everyday life, during training, but especially in those moments when peak athletic performance is required.