Excessive Ruminations Hinder Productivity

A team of experts discovered in a new study that excessive ruminations and thinking too much about a problem can be counterproductive. While many people think about problems from several angles before deciding, dwelling on this for prolonged periods of time can be very detrimental.

Ruminating and brooding are not helpful, researchers behind the new study say. They explain that engaging in such behaviors can lead to making detrimental life choices, or making necessary decisions way too lat for them to have an impact.

At the same time, engaging in non-productive ruminations is a clear sign of depression. These thought patters can take on annoying or paralyzing forms, especially when people ruminate about being depressed. Experts say this is a major symptom of depression itself.

This is a very interesting correlation, psychologists say. Rather than simply being depressed, individuals who suffer from this condition often think actively about this, dwelling on the thought for prolonged periods of time.

Ruminative thinking behaviors can take one of two paths – either they are maladaptive and passive, leading to excessive worries, or focused on finding solutions and active, which translates into coping. The new study was carried out by research teams at the Stanford University.

The main focus of the work was determining how the depressed brain handles or represents these types of though patterns. The team explain the way their study was set up in the latest issue of the renowned journal Biological Psychiatry.

These two different types of ruminations are apparently being controlled by two distinct and competing neural networks, which explains why people cannot be engaged in both at the same time. The passive, self-related thoughts are supported by the default mode network (DMN).

The active, solution-oriented type of ruminations is controlled by the task positive network (TPN), explains Stanford researcher J. Paul Hamilton, PhD, who was the author of the new paper.

“It makes sense that non-productive ruminations would engage default-mode networks in the brain as these systems enable the brain to ‘idle’ when humans are not focused on specific tasks,” Biological Psychiatry editor Dr. John Krystal explains.

“Better understanding the factors that control the switch between these modes of function may provide insights into depression and its treatment,” he concludes, quoted by PsychCentral.