I have to go and do something different now." And so the brain's always in this game of trying to figure out, how do I, how do I lock in and how do I let go? And, and so if all the dials are at five, that makes it much easier to navigate that challenge.

I think that's exactly right.

And what's w-- what's interesting about this whole process is that there's a specific network of regions in the brain called the salience network, whose whole job seems to be to get out of one train of thought and move on to the next one.

Uh, it was discovered almost twenty years ago now as a sort of mediator between w-- a network in the brain that's on a lot of the time called the brain's default mode network.

The default mode network's job is whenever you're thinking about the past or imagining the future or out of the present moment and solving things, the default mode network is on.

It's called that because when they put people in scanners decades ago and scanned them, there was this one network that turned on whenever they weren't doing the task they were supposed to be.

So you put people in the scanner, and you have them do a task, and whenever they stopped doing the task, they would start to mind wander, and they saw this other network turn on they called the default mode.

If a listener feels like they recognize this description of a doom loop and they're in that either with depression or OCD or PTSD or whatever it is for them, what would you recommend for them?

first, for the benefit of the listenership, tell us what TMS is, and then tell us how it applies here.

Perfect.

Okay.

Okay.

So yes, so right now we've got this target circuit in the brain that we'd really love to strengthen because if only we could strengthen it for people, they would have more cognitive control and they'd have more resilience and so on.

And medications don't do it for most people, and therapy takes a really long time and not everyone has the capacity to do it.

But if we could somehow stimulate that area and turn it on over and over again, like do the sit-ups for people, then we could be able to strengthen it.

It's like doing a tune-up on your car, but how do you know, you know, is there some variety that would be useful to have in our society? How do you know when you should get it, at what level?