default mode network

The default mode network — a cluster of brain regions centered on the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortex — becomes active whenever attention turns inward to the self: remembering, planning, narrating the story of 'me'. Experienced meditators show reduced activity in this network, and the quieting of the posterior cingulate in particular tracks the felt sense of effortless awareness. The separate self appears not as a fixed thing but as a process — a network humming. When attention settles, the humming dims, and what remains is awareness without a center.