When we zone out, our brains start listening to our bodies

We all know the feeling. A tedious task, a tired day and a mind that can't seem to keep focus. Some daydream about holidays, memories or experiences they've had. Others revisit situations that were stressful or worry about things to come. But maybe you have also noticed that sometimes when your mind turns inward it goes from the brain and into your body. A heartbeat feels stronger and faster, your breathing is heavier or another part of our body suddenly occupies your mind.

Researchers call this "body-wandering", and at Aarhus University, Dr. Leah Banellis and Professor at the Department of Clinical Medicine Micah Allen have looked into what really happens when the mind checks in on our bodies:

"Our results show that this state is surprisingly common during idle moments, is linked to people's emotional experience and mental health, and has its own distinct 'fingerprint' of brain connectivity," Dr. Leah Banellis explains.

And interestingly, body-wandering is often connected to a negative feeling, she says: "We found that people frequently report thoughts about internal sensations such as their heartbeat, breathing, or stomach. When these body-focused thoughts occurred, participants tended to experience more negative emotions in that moment, and their bodies showed signs of being more activated, such as a faster heartbeat."

The study, which involved more than 500 Danish participants, combined brain scans with detailed self-reports of what people were thinking and feeling during idle moments.

A distinct brain fingerprint

The study also found that body-wandering has its own pattern of brain connectivity distinct from that of ordinary mind-wandering, Micah Allen says: 

"While typical mind-wandering is linked to the prefrontal cortex, a brain region involved in planning and higher-level thinking, body-wandering engages networks that monitor signals from inside the body and regulate how alert and activated the body is."

This finding points to body-wandering as a neurologically distinct phenomenon, not simply a variant of ordinary daydreaming, explains Leah Banellis: "Our thoughts are not separate from the body. The signals coming from our organs may quietly guide what we think about and how we feel throughout the day."

May be linked to our mental health

We all occasionally go body-wandering, but interestingly the study found that even though we often experience a negative feeling when we check in on our bodies, doing it often may be linked to better mental health, Professor Micah Allen explains: "When these body-focused thoughts occurred, participants tended to feel more negative emotions in the moment, and their bodies showed signs of heightened activation, such as an increased heart rate. But at the same time, individuals who reported higher levels of body-wandering overall showed fewer symptoms of ADHD and depression."

This suggests the relationship between bodily attention and mental health may not be straightforward, he says: "Focusing on bodily sensations may sometimes accompany unpleasant feelings in the moment, but people who naturally notice their bodily signals more often also appear to have fewer symptoms of common mental health difficulties."

He and Dr. Banellis hope to do more research into what role the body-mind connection plays for our physical and mental health. "It is important to understand how body-wandering varies across populations, lifespan and cultures. Different societies vary in how much attention we pay to the state of our minds and bodies, and studying this can help us understand if body-wandering is cultural or universal," Micah Allen says. 

The two also hope to research whether our modern lifestyle, spent mostly on digital devices rather than in nature or in social settings, changes how often our attention turns to our bodies – especially among children and young adults.

Behind the research: 

Study type: Large-scale cross-sectional neuroimaging study (basic research). 536 healthy Danish participants completed a 14-minute resting-state fMRI scan followed by a retrospective multidimensional experience sampling questionnaire (22 items covering social-cognitive, affective, and embodied features of ongoing thought). Analyses combined exploratory factor analysis, canonical correlation analysis of whole-brain functional connectivity, and psychophysiological correlation. Part of the Visceral Mind Project funded by Lundbeckfonden.
Partners:

• Home (Aarhus University): Leah Banellis, Niia Nikolova, Malthe Brændholdt, Melina Vejlø, Francesca Fardo, Micah G. Allen — all at Dept of Clinical Medicine, Center of Functionally Integrative Neuroscience

• Abroad: Ignacio Rebollo (German Institute of Human Nutrition, Nuthetal, Germany), Nicolas Legrand (Center for Humanities Computing, Aarhus University), Jonathan Smallwood (Queen’s University, Kingston, Canada; deceased October 24, 2025). 

• Micah G. Allen also affiliated with Dept of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, UK.

Funding:

• Lundbeckfonden Fellowship (R272-2017-4345) to Micah G. Allen

• European Research Council Starting Grant (ERC-2020-StG-948788) to Micah G. Allen

• Lundbeckfonden Postdoctoral Fellowship (R483-2024-1777) to Leah Banellis

Impartiality: The authors declare no competing interest. The funding sources were not involved in study design, collection, analysis, interpretation, or writing of the manuscript.

Deviations from peer review: None. PNAS Direct Submission, published March 25, 2026.

Read more in the scientific paper: https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2520822123
Data and code: https://github.com/embodied-computation-group/body_wandering_CCA

Contact

Professor Micah Allen
Deparment of Clinical Medicine, Health, Aarhus University
Email: micah@cfin.au.dk
Phone: +45 87153435

Postdoc Leah Banellis
Department of Clinical Medicine, Health, Aarhus University
Email: leahbanellis@cfin.au.dk