TOWARD A SCIENCE OF CONSCIOUSNESS

April 9-14, 2012-Loews Ventana Canyon Resort Hotel-Tucson, Arizona

Sponsored byThe Center for Consciousness Studies The University of Arizona

http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu

The program is taking shape for the tenth biennial Tucson conference, Toward a Science of Consciousness 2012. For the first time, the conference will be held at the Loews Ventana Canyon Resort Hotel in the Catalina Foothills above Tucson, Arizona (with a special conference  room rate of  $99 dollars / per room . The deadline for the special conference rate is March 16.   See  booking link: http://www.loewshotels.com/en/Ventana-Canyon-Resort/GroupPages/Consciousness. As in previous conferences, the program will include plenary and keynote talks, concurrent talks, posters, art/science demos and exhibits, pre-conference workshops, side trips and social events in the Tucson conference tradition. Summaries of plenary/keynote sessions and pre-conference workshops are below For further information see the TSC conference website: http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu

Plenary and Keynote Speakers Will Include: Daryl Bem-Ned Block-Melanie Boly-Deepak Chopra-Biyu Jade He-Robert Kentridge-Daniel Kish-Victor Lamme-Hakwan Lau-Steven Laureys-George Mashour-Leonard Mlodinow-Cynthia MossJesse Prinz-David Rosentha-Lore Thaler...and others

Conference Co-Chairs

David Chalmers

Stuart Hameroff

Plenary/Keynote Session themes will include: HOT or NOT: Debate on higher-order theories of consciousness - Does consciousness require "higher-order thought" in the prefrontal cortex?  This debate pits HOT proponents from philosophy (David Rosenthal) and neuroscience (Hakwan Lau) against skeptical counterparts  (Ned Block and Victor Lamme War of the Worldviews: Chopra and Mlodinow on consciousness. Physician, author, spiritualist Deepak Chopra debates physicist Leonard Mlodinow (co-author of'Grand Design' with Stephen Hawking) on their alternative visions of consciousness and its place in the universe. Consciousness and Echolocation: What is it like to echocolate?  Echolocation is perception of objects by sensing their echoes. Animals including bats and dolphins use echolocation, as do some humans, e.g. those who have lost their vision, by emitting sounds. Daniel Kish will give the perspective of a human echolator, and Lore Thaler and Cynthia Moss will discuss echolocation in humans and bats respectively.Fractal consciousness: Scale-free brain structure and dynamicsBrain structure and dynamics have scale-free, 1/f fractal-like layering: self-similar neural structure and activity repeat at different, multiple scales. What do nested brain frequencies and structure tell us about consciousness?  Biyu Jade He and other speakers will discuss their work on temporal structures and functional significance of scale-free brain activity.Retrocausality and consciousness: Cornell psychologist Daryl Bem published the controversial 2011 paper Feeling the 'Future', describing 9 experiments showing backward time effects in brain functions.  Bem and skeptics will debate the question: Is retrocausality a feature of consciousness? (n.b. not common). Searching for consciousness in coma and anesthesia Are patients in coma and vegetative states completely unconscious?  Evidence suggests that consciousness may sometimes be present in these patients, raising medical, philosophical and ethical issues. Keynote speaker neurologist Steven Laureys will review relevant findings and implications for brain mechanisms underlying conscious awareness. In a related session, neurologist Melanie Boly will discuss further studies on comatose patients, and anesthesiologist George Mashour will describe research efforts to detect (and prevent) conscious awareness during anesthesia, and reveal brain pathways and supporting consciousness Can attention occur without consciousness. Using experimental data from blindsight, neuroscientist Robert Kentridge suggests that there can be attention in unconscious perception. Philosopher Jesse Prinz contends that attention is both necessary and sufficient for conscious awareness. 2012   Pre-Conference Workshops  

Monday Morning, April 9, 2012    9:00-1:00

 The Neuroscience of Music - Alexander Graur

- Pranahuti Aided Meditation...- Sastry, Zeng et al

- Synesthesia/Cross-Modal Consciousness 1 - Seaberg, Duffy et al

- The survival of consciousness after death hypothesis: Implications and applications - Beischel, Boccuzzi

Monday Afternoon, April 9, 2012 2:00-6:00

- How do Doctors Measure (Un) Consciousness - Steven Laureys

- Bayesian Statistics - The Bem-Wagenmaker Debate - Klein, Morash

- Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship 1 - Moreira-Almeda, Fenwick et al

- Synesthesia/Cross-Modal Consciousness 2 - Seaberg, Duffy et al

- Meditation 2 - Sastry, Zeng, et al

Special Workshop

Monday evening, April 9, 2012 6:30 to 10:30 pm

- The Neuroscience of Enlightenment - Deepak Chopra

Tuesday, April 10, 2012 9:00-1:00

- Functional Neuroimaging of (Un)Consciousness - Steven Laureys

- Consciousness and Video Game Play - Gackenbach, Schafer, et al

- Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship 2 - Moreira-Almeda, Fenwick etc

- William James 'On the Fringe' - Bruce Mangan

- Quantum Consciousness Update - Stuart Hameroff

- Philosophical Overview of Theories of Consciousness  - Kriegel, Weisberg

Pre-Workshop Fees for Conference Attendees: morning or afternoon sessions, 4 hours (1 part)           standard: $55 student: $45

full day sessions, same day or split (2 parts) 8 hours Parts 1 & 2   standard: $85 student: $75

Monday evening, Apr 9, special evening workshop     standard: $60 student: $50

Non-Conference Attendees/workshop only:  Add $15 per session

Conference Plenary Opens -  Tuesday,  April 10, 2012  -   at 1:45 pm

TSC General Conference Registration

Early Registration - by January 15

standard:  $450     student:  $350

Additional Information regarding side trips, meal options will be posted on the

Conference website:  consciousness.arizona.edu

Abstract Submission - revised deadline December 20.TSC 2012 Conference Abstract Submission System is now open

Abstracts considered for Plenary, Concurrent, Poster and Art/Tech Demo sessions

See:    http://sbs.arizona.edu/project/consciousness/index.php

Schedule of Deadlines

December 20   REVISED Deadline for Abstracts

January 10        Decisions

January 15        Early Registration Due

February 20      Final Abstract Edits 

Program Committee - Toward a Science of Consciousness 2012

David Chalmers, Australian National University, Co-Chair

Stuart Hameroff, University of Arizona, Co-Chair

Uriah Kriegel, University of Arizona

Hakwan Lau, Columbia University

Marilyn Schlitz, Institute of Noetic Sciences

Heather Berlin, Mount Sinai Medical Center

Jonathan Schooler, University of California, Santa Barbara

Melanie  Boly, University of Liege

Moran Cerf, UCLA/NYU

Abi Behar-Montefiore, conference manager, center@u.arizona.edu

Contact: Abi Behar-Montefiore, Manager, Center for Consciousness Studies, University of Arizona - center@u.arizona.edu

Conference Links: CCS WEBSITE     www.consciousness.arizona.edu

CCS /TSC CONFERENCE REGISTRATION and ABSTRACT SUBMISSION 

 http://sbs.arizona.edu/project/consciousness/index.php

QUICK GUIDE to

Abstract Submission Template and Taxonomy

http://consciousness.arizona.edu/documents/TemplateforRegistration.pdf

Conference Hotel Booking Link - Loews Ventana Canyon Hotel - TSC Conference

http://www.loewshotels.com/en/Ventana-Canyon-Resort/GroupPages/Consciousness 

AIRPORT SHUTTLE BOOKING LINK 

Special Conference Rate  $35

Arizona Stagecoach Shuttle 

http://consciousness.arizona.edu/2012AirportShuttleStagecoach.htm

Conference Content Pages Grid

http://consciousness.arizona.edu/2012TSCContentPages.htm

By Eric Schwitzgebel
225 pp. A Bradford Book/The MIT Press. $27.95.

Related
Excerpt: ‘Perplexities of Consciousness’ : Google Books

Why are we so bad at knowing — in this case remembering — what passes through our own minds? The philosopher Eric Schwitzgebel, in “Perplexities of Consciousness,” contends that our minds, rather than being open-access, are largely hidden territory. Despite what we believe about our powers of introspection, the reality is that we know awfully little about what our conscious experience amounts to. Even when reporting current experience, we make divergent, confused and even contradictory claims about what it’s like to be on the inside . Consider binocular double vision, for example. Hold your index finger a foot in front of your nose, and look to the horizon. Some will say they see two “ghostly” fingers, but others will be sure they see just one. Note that people don’t disagree about the external facts — none of us think there’s really more than one finger out there — rather, we disagree at a level one step back: our private sensory experiences. And Schwitzgebel finds further examples across the range of mental life. “Is joy sometimes in the head, sometimes more visceral, sometimes a thrill, and sometimes an expansiveness, or, instead, does joy have a single, consistent core — a distinctive, identifiable, unique experiential character?” We can’t give a straight answer. “What exactly is my sensory experience as I stare at a penny?” Even in such a simple case, we can’t agree. Now, you might suppose that a likely explanation for these disagreements is that different individuals have differently constituted brains, so they are not having the same experience to begin with. Indeed it has been discovered recently that some humans have three times as much brain cortex assigned to receiving information from the eyes as others do. And this must surely be influencing the quality of their experience somehow. Yet Schwitzgebel argues that brain differences, even if they exist, are probably beside the point. For there is plenty of evidence that people will give different interpretations of the very same events inside their heads He begins with the curious case of color in dreams. When people today are asked whether they regularly dream in color, most say they do. But it was not always so. Back in the 1950s most said they dreamed in black and white. Presumably it can hardly be true that our grandparents had different brains that systematically left out the color we put in today. So this must be a matter of interpretation. Yet why such freedom about assigning color? Well, try this for an answer. Suppose that, not knowing quite what dreams are like, we tend to assume they must be like photographs or movies — pictures in the head. Then, when asked whether we dream in color we reach for the most readily available pictorial analogy. Understandably, 60 years ago this might have been black-and-white movies, while for most of us today it is the color version. But, here’s the thing: Neither analogy is necessarily the “right” one. Dreams don’t have to be pictures of any kind at all. They could be simply thoughts — and thoughts, even thoughts about color, are neither colored nor non-colored in themselves. This explanation is of a piece with Schwitzgebel’s general line. We are fantasists about our own mental experiences because we have little other choice. When we are probed by questions beyond our introspective competence, we have to make the answers up as best we can. Schwitz gebel’s message is very much in keeping with much writing in contemporary psychology that aims to knock us from our pedestals of Delphic self-assurance: to prove that we are, as Timothy Wilson says, “strangers to ourselves". This could all be true. We often do have trouble telling what’s going on inside our minds. But still I can’t say this is always because of feeble introspection. I suspect the real problem may be not that we know too little about our mental states but that we know too much. We are asked to say “what it’s like” — to dream, to imagine, to feel — as if there ought to be a simple answer: colored or not, single or double, in the head or in the heart. But, when it comes to it, the rich totality of our experience will not fit the Procrustean bed that philosophy, and everyday discourse also, tries to impose on it. In the 1780s, Thomas Reid, a leading figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, chided his colleagues on just this score: for not appreciating the complex multilayered character of sensory experience. Reid argued that there are always two parallel threads to our experience: “The external senses have a double province; to make us feel, and to make us perceive.” Sensation is how we represent sensory stimuli at the surface of our bodies — the mental representation of “what’s happening to me”; perception, by contrast, is how we represent the outside world, “what’s happening out there.” And these two processes have dissimilar characteristics: sensation is raw and immediate, perception more categorical and slow.  Question, then (it’s one of Schwitzgebel’s examples): When the lights go up on a complex scene, do we immediately “see” the whole scene? The answer can only be yes, and no. At the level of visual sensation, yes, it’s all there, every part of the field, every stitch of the tapestry, seems to be filled in at once. But at the level of perception, no, our picture of what’s out there in the world gets built up over seconds. “What exactly is my experience?” If exactly means simply, this question is one to which there’s no good answer. Reid complained that the habit of confounding sensation and perception “has been the occasion of most of the errors and false theories of philosophers with regard to the senses.” While Schwitz gebel fails to pick up on the sensation-perception distinction where he should do, I’d say there is one consequence of it that could play right into his hands. For, remarkably enough, research has shown we don’t actually need sensation to perceive. There is a clinical syndrome known as “blindsight,” resulting from brain damage, where the subject — to his own astonishment — finds he can “see” the properties of things he’s looking at, even though all visual sensation has been lost. He may indeed be able to guess what color an object is, without, as it were, seeing the color in color. Could the existence of blindsight help resolve the paradox of the color — or lack of it — in dreams? Do we indeed “see blindly” in dreams? I think we may. We dream of Joseph, and weave him an amazing technicolor coat; yet, like the emperor, he is really wearing nothing but ideas. Nicholas Humphrey is school professor emeritus of psychology at the London School of Economics. His most recent book is “Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness.”

A version of this review appeared in print on July 31, 2011, on page BR17 of the Sunday Book Review with the headline: The I of the Beholder.

Announcing an online opportunity for professional education in parapsychology

The Rhine Education Center offers academic courses in the science of parapsychology with the convenience of an online course.  Now accepting applications for:  Introduction to Parapsychology (June 29 – August 31).  Spaces are limited, so apply today!  More information is available at:  http://www.rhineeducationcenter.org/

Parapsychology and Consciousness Conference

The Best in Parapsychology: From Our Minds to Yours.

 From Friday October 14^th through Sunday evening October 16^th, 2011, Atlantic University, at 215 67^th Street in Virginia Beach, Virginia, is hosting a conference called “Parapsychology and Consciousness.” Seventeen speakers including Julie Beischel (Windbridge Institute for Applied Research in Human Potential), Ed May (Laboratories for Fundamental Research), Roger Nelson (the Global Consciousness Project) and Dean Radin (Institute of Noetic Sciences) are the featured speakers. Among the other speakers on tap will be Carlos Alvarado, Loyd Auerbach, Stephen Braude, James Carpenter, David McMillin, Ginette Nachman, John Palmer, Frank Pasciuti, Henry Reed, Doug Richards, Christine Simmonds-Moore, Robert Van De Castle and Nancy Zingrone. Topics will include original research, and sessions on parapsychology and psychology, future directions in parapsychology, and psychics and mediums. An early bird registration (deadline August 15^th) is open now. Sessions will be held at the Visitor’s Center of Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment, a block from the beach on the Atlantic Ocean. For more details on the conference, the speakers, the cooperating Oceanfront hotels and more, go to www.atlanticuniv.edu and click on “Parapsychology and Consciousness”     

 Brain and Motivation

بررسی و شناخت انگیزش، جهت تحلیل صحیح کیفیت زندگی کار مهمی تلقی می شود. این مهم است که بدانیم چرا چیز بخصوصی را - مثلن فرد بخصوصی را، رابطه بخصوصی را، ایده وطرز فکر بخصوصی را - می خواهیم؟ در حالی که دیگران ممکن است آن چیز را نخواهند. انگیزه های ما از کجا سرچشمه می گیرد؟ چه نوع انگیزه ای موجب بهبود زندگی و چه نوع انگیزه ای سبب رکود زندگی شخصی می شود؟ آیا می شود انگیزه افراد را برای انجام کاری مشخص افزایش داد یا خیر؟ چه رابطه ای میان شخصیت افراد وانگیزه های خاص آنان وجود دارد؟ و... به گواهی روانشناسان مباحث بسیار معدودی به اندازه مبحث " انگیزش"  برای زندگی ما مفید هستند. آشنایی با  "انگیزش "، به ما کمک می کند تا از مسایل مهمی آگاه شویم: ماهیت انسان، درک تلاش وی برای پیشرفت و کسب قدرت، تمایل وی برای برقراری روابط صمیمانه، افزایش دادن توانمندیها وشا یستگی ها وبرنامه ریزی برای رسیدن به اهداف.

**

در این دوره آموزشی تلاش بر آن است تا ضمن معرفی انواع انگیزش، نظریه های انگیزش، رابطه انگیزش با نیاز های فردی واجتماعی و... به روشهای کارکردی در باره چگونگی باانگیزه کردن خود و دیگران در روانشناسی مثبت نگر اشاره کنیم که را بطه مستقیمی با بهبود کیفیت زندگی روزمره ما دارد.

تاریخ شروع دوره: جمعه ۱۹ فروردین ماه ۱۳۹۰

ساعت شروع کلاسها: ۵:۳۰ عصر

توجه: کلاسها به صورت هفتگی تشکیل می شود وبا موافقت دانشجویان شرکت کننده امکان تغییر ساعت برگزاری کلاسها وجود دارد.

 Mind, consciousness and self-awareness

درروانشناسی تکاملی اعتقاد برآن است که ما انسانها به عنوان حیواناتی با قشر مغز پیشرفته تر، با میراثی پا به دنیا می گذاریم که حاصل هزاران سال زندگی نیاکان واجدادمان است. درواقع بنا به قوانین تکاملی، ما بازمانده موجوداتی هستیم که سازگاری بیشتری برای ادامه حیات دراین سیاره داشته اند. براین اساس، مباحث وسوالات بسیار جذابی دراین حوزه مطرح است که از آن جمله می توان به موارد زیر اشاره کرد:

-کدام صفات ورفتارهای انسان امروزی پس از گذشت هزاران سال درزنجیره تکامل به قوت خود باقی مانده است ودلیل این پایداری چه بوده است؟ 

- از نقطه نظر تکاملی، دلیل وجود هیجانات و رفتارهایی مانند عشق، وفاداری، حسادت جنسی، وطن پرستی و...، درمیان انسانها چیست؟

- هوشیاری شناختی چیست و چه تفاوتی با هوشیاری سایر حیوانات دارد؟

- علت به وجود آمدن خود - آگاهی درانسان، از نظر تکاملی چیست؟

- آیا نوعی شعور یا هوشیاری دسته جمعی میان انسان وسایر حیوانات وجود دارد؟

و...

دراین دوره آموزشی سعی برآن است تا با معرفی برخی مباحث درحوزه روانشناسی تکاملی وتمرکز بر مفهوم " هوشیاری " به برخی از این سوالات مهم دراین حوزه پاسخ دهیم.

 تاریخ شروع کلاسها: جمعه 2۲ بهمن ماه ۱۳۸۹ - ساعت شروع: ۵ الی ۷ عصر

Study Shows People in Love Feel Less Pain

Santa Cruz Sentinel [via Omaha World-Herald] | Published Saturday January 8, 2011

 “One word frees us of all the weight and pain of life. That word is love.”

 It’s been 2,500 years since the Greek playwright Sophocles wrote those words, but scientists have now proved them true, that being in love can in fact reduce pain. And they’ve shown why. Love may tap into some of the brain’s oldest pathways, making us feel so euphoric that we ignore pain, according to a recent study at Stanford University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook. The scientists found that students in love felt less pain while staring at a picture of their significant others. In addition, love acted through the same brain pathway used by several strong painkillers and addictive drugs, such as heroin and cocaine. Studying the pathways might tell us more about love and also help find ways to treat both pain and addiction.“It was a nice connecting of the dots between what we understand of the neural systems of love and what we understand of the neural systems of pain,” said Dr. Sean Mackey, head of pain management at Stanford’s School of Medicine and one of the study’s researchers. Love acts on the same brain systems as any intensely rewarding experience, such as winning the lottery, said Arthur Aron, a social psychologist at SUNY who collaborated in the study.  Aron has been a “love researcher” for 30 years but never thought to study pain until he attended a conference five years ago and shared a hotel room with Mackey. “Sean and I really hit it off,” he said. As the two discussed what brain pathways each studied, they realized they were talking about the same ones. They decided to study the interaction between love and pain. In 2007, they posted fliers at Stanford seeking students to be subjects. “It’s the easiest study I’ve ever recruited for,” Mackey said. “Within hours we had a dozen couples knocking on our door.” The scientists sought those who described themselves as intensely in love and who also scored high on a “passionate love scale,” a standardized measure of romantic feelings. In addition, the study accepted only students who’d been in a relationship for nine months or less — to get those with the strongest romantic feelings. To inflict pain, the scientists used a heated probe on each student’s hand, slowly increasing the temperature until the pain became intolerable. Students rated their pain on a scale of zero to 10, with 10 being “the worst pain imaginable.” The researchers then generated various pain levels while students lay inside a brain scanner looking either at a picture of their significant other or someone they found equally attractive. Students felt a lot less pain when they stared at their partner’s picture. And the more time they said they had spent thinking about their partners, the greater their pain relief. Participants also got pain relief while performing distracting word-association tasks, answering questions such as, “What are some sports that don’t use a ball?” Previous studies have shown that such distraction can reduce pain. When the scientists compared the brain images from love and distraction, “the results were very exciting,” Mackey said. “Love engaged all the regions that we were hoping that it would engage. But even better, it clearly demonstrated that it works in an entirely different way than distraction.” Mackey likened the brain to a stereo with many amplifiers, such as love and distraction. How we perceive pain depends on how high the volume is on the various amplifiers, and they can work independently of each other, he said. Understanding these ancient brain pathways could help develop pain medications with fewer side effects, or find non-medical ways to treat pain. “I could just prescribe a passionate love affair for all my patients every six months,” Mackey said, laughing. A more realistic prescription, he said, would be for them to “get out there and do something new and fun.” The researchers note that romantic love doesn’t always end well. “If it’s not reciprocated, it’s tragic,” one of the main causes of suicide and depression, Aron said.

How the brain's architecture makes our view of the world unique

EurekAlert! | 5-Dec-2010

Contact: Craig Brierley  c.brierley@wellcome.ac.uk

Wellcome Trust scientists have shown for the first time that exactly how we see our environment depends on the size of the visual part of our brain.We are all familiar with the idea that our thoughts and emotions differ from one person to another, but most people assume that how we perceive the visual world is usually very similar from person to person. However, the primary visual cortex – the area at the back of the brain responsible for processing what we see in the world around us – is known to differ in size by up to three times from one individual to the next. Now, researchers at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London) have shown for the first time that the size of this area affects how we perceive our environment. Their study is published online today in the journal Nature Neuroscience.Dr D Samuel Schwarzkopf, Chen Song and Professor Geraint Rees showed a series of optical illusions to thirty healthy volunteers. These included the Ebbinghaus illusion, a well-known illusion in which two circles of the same size are each surrounded by circular 'petals'; one of the circles is surrounded by larger petals, the other by smaller petals. Most people will see the first circle as smaller than the second one. In a second optical illusion, the Ponzo illusion, the volunteers were shown two identically sized circles superimposed onto the image of a tunnel. In this illusion, the circle placed further back in the tunnel appears larger than that placed near the front.By adapting these illusions, the researchers were able to show that individual volunteers saw the illusions differently. For example, some people saw a big (although illusory) difference in size between the two circles, but others barely saw any difference in apparent size. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers were also able to measure the surface area of the primary visual cortex in each volunteer. They found a great deal of variability in the size of this area. Surprisingly, there was a strong link between its size and the extent to which volunteers perceived the size illusion – the smaller the area, the more pronounced the visual illusion."Our work is the first to show that the size of part of a person's brain can predict how they perceive their visual environment," explains Dr Schwarzkopf."Optical illusions mystify and inspire our imagination, but in truth they show us that how we see the world is not necessarily physically accurate, but rather depends a lot on our brains. Illusions such as the ones we used influence how big something looks; that is, they can trick us into believing that two identical objects have different sizes."We have shown that precisely how big something appears to you depends on the size of a brain area that is necessary for vision. How much your brain tricks you depends on how much 'real estate' your brain has put aside for visual processing."

Caption: The Ebbinghaus illusion. Most people will see the first circle as smaller than the second one Researchers found a strong link between the surface area of the primary visual cortex and the extent to which volunteers perceived the size illusion -- the smaller the area, the more pronounced the visual illusion.

Credit: Dr. Samuel Schwarzkopf, UCL

Study finds the mind is a frequent, but not happy, wanderer

People spend nearly half their waking hours thinking about what isn’t going on around them

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. -- People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they're doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. So says a study that used an iPhone web app to gather 250,000 data points on subjects' thoughts, feelings, and actions as they went about their lives.The research, by psychologists Matthew A. Killingsworth and Daniel T. Gilbert of Harvard University, is described this week in the journal Science."A human mind is a wandering mind, and a wandering mind is an unhappy mind," Killingsworth and Gilbert write. "The ability to think about what is not happening is a cognitive achievement that comes at an emotional cost."Unlike other animals, humans spend a lot of time thinking about what isn't going on around them: contemplating events that happened in the past, might happen in the future, or may never happen at all. Indeed, mind-wandering appears to be the human brain's default mode of operation.To track this behavior, Killingsworth developed an iPhone web app that contacted 2,250 volunteers at random intervals to ask how happy they were, what they were currently doing, and whether they were thinking about their current activity or about something else that was pleasant, neutral, or unpleasant.Subjects could choose from 22 general activities, such as walking, eating, shopping, and watching television. On average, respondents reported that their minds were wandering 46.9 percent of time, and no less than 30 percent of the time during every activity except making love."Mind-wandering appears ubiquitous across all activities," says Killingsworth, a doctoral student in psychology at Harvard. "This study shows that our mental lives are pervaded, to a remarkable degree, by the non-present."Killingsworth and Gilbert, a professor of psychology at Harvard, found that people were happiest when making love, exercising, or engaging in conversation. They were least happy when resting, working, or using a home computer."Mind-wandering is an excellent predictor of people's happiness," Killingsworth says. "In fact, how often our minds leave the present and where they tend to go is a better predictor of our happiness than the activities in which we are engaged."The researchers estimated that only 4.6 percent of a person's happiness in a given moment was attributable to the specific activity he or she was doing, whereas a person's mind-wandering status accounted for about 10.8 percent of his or her happiness.Time-lag analyses conducted by the researchers suggested that their subjects' mind-wandering was generally the cause, not the consequence, of their unhappiness."Many philosophical and religious traditions teach that happiness is to be found by living in the moment, and practitioners are trained to resist mind wandering and to 'be here now,'" Killingsworth and Gilbert note in Science. "These traditions suggest that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind."This new research, the authors say, suggests that these traditions are right. Killingsworth and Gilbert's 2,250 subjects in this study ranged in age from 18 to 88, representing a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds and occupations. Seventy-four percent of study participants were American.More than 5,000 people are now using the iPhone web app the researchers have developed to study happiness, which can be found at www.trackyourhappiness.org