In bad news for proponents of the “inner life,” a study in the current The Journal of Neuroscience suggests that “the normal brain activity of daydreaming fuels the sequence of events leading to Alzheimer’s”:

Researchers at Washington University and the University of Pittsburgh used five imaging techniques to map the brains of 764 people. The subjects fell into three groups - people in their 20s, and older people with either early-stage dementia, or Alzheimer’s disease.

When they compared images, they found that parts of the brain involved in musing, daydreaming or recalling pleasant memories in young people were where evidence of Alzheimer’s disease appears.