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Your mind going blank is not always a memory failure. New neuroscience suggests these empty moments may be brief, sleep-like lapses in the brain, often triggered by stress, fatigue, or distraction.
Neuroscience Has Discovered Exactly What Happens When Your Mind Goes Blank
Author: Jessica Stillman
Have you ever been in the middle of an explanation or idea and … just forgotten entirely where you were going with it? Have you walked into a room and then suddenly had zero recollection of why you were there? Maybe you studied for an exam only to discover a giant blank in your mind where an answer should be. Or you caught yourself staring into space with nothing but emptiness in your head.
Most of us experience our minds going blank at unpredictable and sometimes unfortunate moments. It’s common, but it can also be unsettling. When is mind-blanking a cause for concern? And why on earth have our brains developed this habit of just sometimes going on the fritz?
New research recently published in PNAS provides a fascinating explanation. The study offers insights into why our brains sometimes go empty, how often this normally happens, and how to avoid blanking out at inopportune moments.
What happens in your brain when your mind goes blank
We tend to think of our minds as producing a constant stream of consciousness when we’re awake. You might not be having deep or productive thoughts, but unless you’re asleep, you probably expect something to be going on upstairs.
This research out of the Sorbonne calls into question this intuition, however. For the study, the team recruited 62 volunteers and had them complete a long, tedious task while monitoring their brain activity using high-density electroencephalography (EEG).
The results showed that episodes of mind blanking aren’t rare. And that something very specific is going on in your brain when you suddenly have no thoughts at all.
“During these moments, connectivity between distant neural networks decreased,” explains the Paris Brain Institute. This pattern looks somewhat similar to how the brain appears during sleep.
“These observations suggest that during a mind blanking episode, participants had reduced access to sensory information from their environment,” study author Thomas Andrillon commented. “These new data support an emerging idea: being awake does not necessarily mean being conscious of something.”
In fact, we spend a surprising percentage of our waking lives with empty minds.
“Mind-blanking is likely an extremely common occurrence, during which certain brain regions briefly slip into a sleep-like state. We estimate it accounts for 5 to 20 percent of waking hours, although there are significant differences between individuals,” Andrillon added.
When is mind-blanking most common?
That’s good news if your occasional mental lapses had you worried about the state of your brain or memory. All signs point to the fact that zoning out is a perfectly normal part of the human experience. It can still be an annoying one, however.
If you’d like to reduce your chances of having your head go empty, it is helpful to know what kinds of factors make mind blanking more likely. On The Conversation recently, brain-aging researcher Sophie Andrews listed three types of situations that make these kinds of mental lapses more common:
- When we’re sleep-deprived. “When we are very tired, we can experience ‘local sleep.’ This is where the activity in parts of our brains is sleep-like even if we are awake. This can cause the attention system to temporarily shut off, which researchers think may lead to mind blanks,” Andrews explains.
- When we’re stressed. High levels of stress can result in high levels of the brain chemical noradrenaline. “This puts the body in fight or flight mode. This focuses our attention on immediate threats, reducing its ability to retrieve what it sees as non-essential memories,” she adds.
- When we’re multitasking. “If the executive attention network doesn’t encode a memory efficiently in the first place — because, for example, we were multitasking or distracted — then it might not be easily retrieved later on. This can also lead to a mind blank.”
Tips to zone out less
What does this mean for entrepreneurs who are hoping not to make fools of themselves by blanking on that crucial statistic or the next part of the presentation?
You’ll probably reduce the chances of your mind going blank if you get enough sleep the night before any event where you hope to be at your sharpest. Techniques like deep breathing and shifting your perspective that help reduce stress will also help. (Follow the links for more info.)
Finally, if you hope to remember it later, make sure you give it your full attention now. If you walk into a room and have no idea why, it might be that your brain is taking a micro-nap. It also might be that a moment ago you were sending a text, reminding yourself of a meeting, and telling yourself you need to go grab some socks at the same time. No wonder your brain now can’t remember any of those three things well.
The rare times you do need to worry
The happiest news of all from Andrews is that, for the vast majority of people, occasional mind blanking is nothing to worry about. It is a particularly common occurrence for people with ADHD and anxiety.
There are a few exceptions, though. Conditions such as depression, dementia, or stroke can make mind blanking dramatically worse. But if one of those causes is to blame, your mental lapses will likely get dramatically worse quickly.
So, “if you’ve noticed mind blanking becoming more common, if there has been a sudden onset of symptoms, or if your friends or family have raised concerns,” it’s time to see your doctor, she warns.
Otherwise, you’re just a human with a normal human brain. Apparently, we’re all wired in such a way that our minds just go empty sometimes, especially when we’re tired, stressed, and distracted. It’s nothing to worry about. But it is something you can reduce with a little more rest, relaxation, and concentration.
Credits: TCA, LLC.