The DMN between Imagination, Creativity and Musement: a new path for neurosemiotics

The Default Mode Network (DMN) is reshaping cognitive neuroscience, offering fresh insights into high-level cognitive processes and the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences. This article explores how neuroscientific research on the DMN can inform a neurosemiotic approach. It builds on Duarte’s recent proposal (2020; 2022) to associate the activities of this neural network with Peirce’s notion of musement, while arguing that such an identification faces significant challenges and calls for critical reconsideration. Through an analysis of Peirce’s Collected Papers and the neuroscientific literature on the DMN’s role in creativity, the article demonstrates that: (1) musement and the DMN can only be linked indirectly; and (2) the DMN exhibits a non-specific role in creative production. Expanding on this framework, it further suggests that the DMN is tied to a more fundamental semiotic process essential to everyday semiosis: imagination.