Work

How to catch a blank mind? Brain similarities and differences between self- and probe-caught mind blanking

Year: 2026

Type: preprint

Abstract: Mind Blanking (MB) is a mental state characterized by the experience of a seemingly empty mind. This apparent mental emptiness challenges the theoretical view of a continuous and content-full stream of thought, leading to the question of how it is possible to capture MB events in the first place. MB research has relied largely on probe-caught experience-sampling, during which participants are interrupted at random times to report their mental state. This approach risks missing some MB events as they may occur between probes. Self-caught paradigms, on the other hand, allow participants to report MB upon spontaneously realizing it, relying on meta-awareness. What remains unclear is whether these two methods capture similar properties of MB. To address this gap, we investigated whether probe-caught MB (pMB) and self-caught MB (sMB) methodologies converge on behavioral and brain correlates. Twenty-two participants underwent 3T fMRI scanning while performing both a pMB and a sMB experience-sampling task. We found that both MB reports were uniformly distributed over time and that their report frequencies significantly correlated across individuals, pointing towards a behavioral convergence across the two approaches. Time-varying functional connectivity further revealed that both pMB and sMB were linked to a hyperconnectivity pattern, and that sMB had higher global signal magnitude compared to mind wandering, pointing towards a brain mode characterized by low arousal levels. According to our predictions, sMB elicited greater activations in the anterior cingulate cortex and (pre)motor areas, as well as deactivations in occipital, temporal, and frontal regions, compared to pMB, potentially reflecting metacognitive processes involved in self-detecting MB, alongside motor preparation associated with self-initiated responses. Together, our results show an overall converge of sMB and pMB on neurobehavioral correlates. This positions the self-caught methodology as a complementary tool for studying MB without external interruption, while highlighting the role of meta-awareness in self-report detection.

Source: bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)

DOI: 10.64898/2026.06.10.731344