The neural correlates of “mind blanking”: When the mind goes away

Abstract

Mind blanking (MB) is the state where our minds are seemingly “nowhere,” and attention calls no perceptual input into conscious awareness. It is little investigated, perhaps partly because it is difficult to detect the mysterious periods of blanking. In this study, we found that our participants could intentionally produce a state of MB whose neural correlates were deactivation of Broca's area and parts of the default mode network (namely, the hippocampus) which would be active during mind wandering (MW), in addition to activity in another region in the default mode network (namely, anterior cingulate cortex). Because the behavioral finding replicates a previous report of ours, we suggest that the simple instructions that we used to induce MB should be effective. From the neuroimaging data, we conclude that we cannot define the content of our thoughts during MB because our inner speech system does not work at that time. Another possibility is that we actually think of nothing in the MB state. Although more sophisticated studies would be needed to uncover the mechanism of such a phenomenon, the present study provides a methodology and clues for understanding MB and related concepts such as MW, awareness, and metacognitive ability.

Decoding Activity in Broca's Area Predicts the Occurrence of Auditory Hallucinations Across Subjects

“…In this vein, the BA could be sensitive to intrusiveness into consciousness, irrespective of the highly variable phenomenological content of the voices (4). Even if speculative at this stage, this assumption appears compatible with recent findings showing the involvement of the inferior frontal gyrus in the intrusion of unwanted thoughts more broadly, notably in OCD patients suffering from severe obsessions (43), while states of "mind-blanking" were shown to be associated with BA deactivation (44).…”

Minimal phenomenal experience

“…the phenomenology of cognitive agency (as described in Metzinger, 2013Metzinger, , 2017; b. the different types of spontaneous, task-unrelated thought (Fox & Christoff, 2018;; c. all episodes in which perception is completely uncoupled from attention (mere "mind-blanking"; cf. Kawagoe, Onoda, & Yamaguchi, 2019;Ward & Wegner, 2013).…”

Is Instructional Scaffolding a Better Strategy for Teaching Writing to EFL Learners? A Functional MRI Study in Healthy Young Adults

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