The Salience Network

The salience network (SN) is “the moderator.”

As your mind’s personal moderator, the salience network constantly monitors the external world and carefully decides how other brain networks react to new information and stimuli.

The SN moderates switching between the internal and external processing¹ of the brain’s two main control networks:² the default mode network (DMN) and central executive network (CEN), respectively.

In healthy brains, these two networks are not active at the same time. To avoid missed information or mixed messages, the SN determines which network is in control at any given moment.