You look up from your phone screen and suddenly realize you are not thinking anything. It is not a lapse of memories or fantasies. It’s literally a moment when you’re not thinking anything.
Neuroscientists have the term – mind-bllol – which they define as a brief awakening state when conscious thought simply stops.
Scientists have thought that our awakened minds are always generating ideas, but recent research shows that this is not the case. Mind blanking is now recognized by neuroscience as a distinct state of consciousness associated with changes in arousal, referring to arousal and responsiveness to stimuli. Some researchers believe that studying this strange state could shed light on the mechanisms of consciousness.
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“For some people, it’s a kind of blip in the mind, suddenly there’s nothing,” Thomas Andrillon, a neuroscience researcher at the French National Institutes of Health Medicine and the Paris Brain Institute, told Live Science. “But it wasn’t that feeling, but “There was something I had forgotten.”
Many people don’t know the lapse until they are urged to answer, “What were you just thinking?”
“Randomly interrupting them, Andriron continued. The frequency of this phenomenon varies from person to person, but various studies suggest that this condition can cost around 5% to 20% of a person’s awakening time.
Related: Overmap of brain cells that keep us awakening us can improve our understanding of consciousness
“Mind Blanking” Survey
In a study published in the July issue of the Journal Trends of Cognitive Science, Andryon and his team use EEG (EEG), which involves placing electrodes on participants’ heads, to measure brain activity and pay attention to mind wandering and mind blanking. Mind wandering occurs when people’s thoughts hang on tasks and ideas that are unrelated to the task at hand, but mind blanking involves not all thoughts.
While wearing the EEG cap, participants saw numbers flashing rapidly on the display screen. They were told to press the button every time the numbers were displayed except for 3 and to skip. This task tests how quickly people respond when they need a response, and how well they can block that response if necessary.
Most of the numbers presented required a response, so people often accidentally pressed buttons when they saw three on-screens. Researchers paused the task once a minute to ask what participants were thinking, and found that they were focusing on their work, or their minds wandering, or that they were experiencing a “mind blank.”
Participants pressed the button more quickly when the mind wandered, but the response was significantly slower during the BL laughs in the heart, suggesting that these two mental states were clear.
I talked about the same thing about brain activity. EEG data showed that participants’ brain activity tended to be slightly slower than when they wandered, compared to their attention baseline when their minds were more blank than when they were wandering. “Connectivity changes as if the inner brain mechanics are specific to that state,” Andrion said.
EEG data are best for tracking rapid changes in brain activity, but it is not possible to pinpoint exactly which brain regions are involved. This is because it records brain waves through the skull and records the signal being blurred as it passes through brain tissue, fluid and bones. Andryon explained that it was like listening to a wall. I know if the group inside is loud or quiet, but I don’t know who’s talking.
The results of this study suggest that brain activity slows globally during cardiac inflammation, but this technique cannot identify specific areas. That’s where the functional MRI (fMRI) is located.
Related: “over-synchronized” EEG may explain why different psychedelics have similar effects, rat studies revealed
Hypersensitivity
fMRI provides a clearer view of which regions are active and how they interact, but the technique tracks blood flow rather than directly tracking brain signals, resulting in slower tracking speeds. The fMRI is like peering into the room and seeing who is talking to who, but when they don’t know exactly, Andrion said.
Co-authors of Athena Demertzi, a neuroscience researcher at Giga Institute-CRC Human Imaging Center at the University of Liege in Belgium, led the fMRI portion of the study. As people rested on the fMRI scanner without getting a specific task, Demarzi and her team regularly asked what they were thinking.
The results were amazing. When people reported inflammation of the heart, their brains showed exaggeration – a global synchronous activity pattern similar to that seen in deep sleep. Usually, when we are awake and aware, our brain regions are connected and communicated, but not synchronized, so that they appear to be in the blanks of our minds.
“What we’re thinking is that it happens in the case of a flame of the heart. The brain is pushed a little into the sync aspect,” Andryon said. “It may be enough to confuse these sweet places of consciousness and send our hearts to the blank.”
Although mind blanking research is still in its early stages, Andryon and DeMatzi noted that similarities to brain patterns seen in deep sleep could provide important clues about its function. Deep sleep, also known as slow wave sleep, coincides with the important cleanup tasks of the brain. It helps remove accumulated waste, cool the brain, save energy, and reset the system one day after mental activity.
Andrillon and Demertzi suggested that mind blanking could act as a mini reset while we were awake. Demarzi said it was like “putting steam to take the five” or “cooling the head.” Early research in Demertzi’s lab suggests that sleep-deprived people report more mind blanks and support this idea.
Both researchers emphasized that this state is likely a way the brain maintains itself, but “it’s not ideal for performance,” Andryon said.
Andryon believes that is possible, but it is unlikely that anyone has ever experienced a falsehood in their heart. Detecting the blanks in the mind is a challenge. “It may need to be interrupted,” Andryon said. “In fact, there was no content.”
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