20 years of the default mode network: a review and synthesis

By Vinod Menon. Neuron, 2023

722 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The discovery of the default mode network (DMN) has revolutionized our understanding of the workings of the human brain. Here, I review developments that led to the discovery of the DMN, offer a personal reflection, and consider how our ideas of DMN function have evolved over the past two decades. I summarize literature examining the role of the DMN in self-reference, social cognition, episodic and autobiographical memory, language and semantic memory, and mind wandering. I identify unifying themes and propose new perspectives on the DMN’s role in human cognition. I argue that the DMN integrates and broadcasts memory, language, and semantic representations to create a coherent “internal narrative” reflecting our individual experiences. This narrative is central to the construction of a sense of self, shapes how we perceive ourselves and interact with others, may have ontogenetic origins in self-directed speech during childhood, and forms a vital component of human consciousness.

Subfields: Cognitive Neuroscience

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/74e9cad6e3d8b4187216aaaaa171d808e48d34f0

Citations in the corpus

• Hemispherotomy leads to persistent sleep-like slow waves in the isolated cortex of awake humans (2025, unknown): “A possible rationale for the second interpretation is that, in healthy awake subjects, the DMN is typically activated during self-directed mentation, such as daydreaming and reflection [113].”