Brain imaging study reveals the wandering mind behind insomnia

Study is the first to find functional MRI differences in working memory in people with primary insomniaDARIEN, IL – A new brain imaging study may help explain why people with insomnia often complain that they struggle to concentrate during the day even when objective evidence of a cognitive problem is lacking. “We found that insomnia subjects did not properly turn on brain regions critical to a working memory task and did not turn off ‘mind-wandering’ brain regions irrelevant to the task,” said lead author Sean P.A. Drummond, PhD, associate professor in the department of psychiatry at