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Her key finding is that severe dissociative symptoms likely involve the connections between two specific brain networks that are active at the same time: the so-called default mode network—which kicks in when the mind is at rest and involves remembering the past and envisioning the future—and the frontoparietal control network—which is involved in problem-solving.

Two of them corresponded to the DMN and DAT, and six related to other known networks underlying brain functions: the sensory and motor network, the visual network, the ventral attention network, the frontoparietal network and two networks representing cross-brain states of activation and deactivation.

In particular, the rational, logical, well-behaved frontoparietal regions became “strongly destabilized,” the scientists reported, melding with activity in emotional and other regions to produce “unconstrained consciousness,” “mind wandering,” and a sense that everything is connected to everything else.

Finding that dream-related activity was focused toward the back of the brain was surprising, he says, because consciousness is widely thought to arise in frontoparietal regions.

Though tentative and as yet unpublished, the scans found much greater than average communication between parts of Gareyev’s brain that make up what is called the frontoparietal control network.