Healthcare (Commonwealth Union) – If you come across a situation where you are completely tuned out your surroundings, struggled to find the right thoughts, or reached for memories that just wouldn’t come, you’ve likely experienced something known as mind blanking. This common phenomenon is described in various ways—from feeling mentally foggy to experiencing a total lack of conscious thought.
Now, a group of neuroscientists and philosophers from Europe and Monash University has released a paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences that brings together current knowledge on mind blanking, including findings from their own studies of brain activity during these episodes.
The researchers indicated that while we are awake, our minds move fluidly from one thought to another. But sometimes, we hit moments where there’s simply nothing there to report—these are known as mind blanking.
Although the exact nature of these mental voids is still uncertain, Dr Jennifer Windt from Monash University’s Centre for Consciousness and Contemplative Studies suggests they’re more likely to occur when the brain is either highly stimulated or very subdued.
Dr Windt indicated that even when we try to stay focused on a task, our attention often drifts away from what we’re doing and the present moment.
“Moreover, when our attention lapses, we can experience a variety of mental states, such as daydreaming and freely moving thoughts, or even no thoughts at all, as in mind blanking.”
Antoine Lutz, who is a fellow author of the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France says, “Our aim here is to start a conversation and see how mind blanking relates to other seemingly similar experiences, such as meditation.”
The coordinating author Athena Demertzi from the GIGA Research Institute at the University of Liège in Belgium pointed out that their goal was to gain a deeper understanding of mind blanking by analyzing 80 key studies — including their own, where they were involved in monitored brain activity in participants who reported experiencing moments of ‘thinking about nothing.’
The study revealed several key insights into the phenomenon of mind blanking. While the frequency of these episodes varies significantly between individuals, people experience them on average between 5 to 20 per cent of the time. Mind blanking typically involves moments of lost attention, difficulty recalling information, and the sudden absence of inner dialogue.
These episodes are especially common toward the end of mentally demanding tasks—such as during exams—or following sleep deprivation and intense physical exertion, though they are also considered a normal part of the waking experience. Notably, children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) report experiencing mind blanks more frequently than their neurotypical peers.
Physiological data from the study showed that during these moments, participants exhibited slower heart rates, smaller pupil sizes, and decreased brain signal complexity—patterns that closely resemble those seen in unconscious states. Researchers also observed disruptions in sensory processing and the presence of slow, sleep-like brain waves, describing these occurrences as “local sleep episodes”, where parts of the brain essentially fall asleep while the person remains awake.
The researchers suggest that different types of blanking may share a common cause: fluctuations in arousal levels that disrupt core cognitive functions like memory, language, or attention.
Because blanking experiences differ widely — both in how people perceive them and in their associated brain activity — the team proposes a new framework. They describe mind blanking as a dynamic set of experiences shaped by physiological states of arousal, or what they call the body’s level of “vigilance”.
Lead author Thomas Andrillon, formerly a Research Fellow in Psychology at Monash and now based at the University of Liège, indicated that they see the study of mind blanking as insightful, important, and timely. It’s insightful because it challenges the widespread belief that wakefulness is always filled with ongoing thoughts—and important because it reveals how subjective experiences can vary significantly from person to person.
