Mind wandering refers to the phenomenon where one’s mind momentarily drifts away from the external task at hand and becomes more focused on internal trains of thought. We are studying whether periods of mind wandering can be construed as periods of time when we automatically and unconsciously “turn off” our spatial attention. Critical to this work is determining not only what attentional mechanisms in cortex are affected by mind wandering, but how mind wandering changes task-related attentional responses.