Your mind really can go blank when you're awake. Here's what happens in your brain
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The human mind really can go blank during consciousness, according to a new review that challenges the assumption people experience a constant flow of thoughts when awake.
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Instead, there are moments when the human mind seems empty of any content, and people seemingly aren't thinking of anything at all.
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'Mind blanking' is a newly explored and distinct mental state that isn't the same as a lapse of attention or a wandering mind, the research team writes. People aren't thinking about something else.
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Mind blanking is a common, daily life phenomenon linked to changes in states of arousal, the researchers report, and tends to occur towards the end of long and demanding attention tasks like exams, when people are sleep deprived or after an intense workout. Meaning that, 'when the brain is in a high- or low-arousal state, a mind blank is more likely to occur.'
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In experiments with healthy volunteers, the brain shows signs of 'deactivation' and an increase in sleep-like slow brain waves during a reported mind blank. Heart rates and pupil sizes decrease. A part of the brain appears asleep, 'which may represent a state of 'local sleep' rather than outright sleep,' the researchers write.
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The experience has been described as a 'lack of conscious awareness,' they noted, during which 'the individual is not focally aware of any stimuli, either internal or external,' a particularly dangerous state if it occurs during high-risk, inopportune moments, like driving.
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It may be the result of glitches in memory, language or attention. In experiments, people report feeling sleepier, and more sluggish, and they make more errors on attention tasks moments before their minds go 'nowhere.'
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While some people never report mind blanking, adults and children with ADHD (attention deficient hyperactivity disorder) report the experience more frequently than 'neurotypical people,' the researchers said.
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'Mind going blank' is also one of the core symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder. It's also related to strokes, seizures, traumatic brain injuries and an 'ultra-rare' sleep disorder (Kleine-Levin syndrome) that affects primarily teenage boys and that causes them to sleep up to 20 hours a day.
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'The experience of a 'blank mind' is as intimate and direct as that of bearing thoughts,' the team of neuroscientists and philosophers write.
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It's not entirely clear what these 'blanks' represent, they said. However, 'We sought to better understand mind blanking by parsing through 80 relevant research articles — including some of our own in which we recorded participants' brain activity when they were reporting that they were 'thinking of nothing,'' Athena Demertzi, of the University of Liege, Belgium, said in a press release.
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