How to Catch a Blank Mind? Brain Similarities and Differences between Self- and Probe-Caught Mind Blanking
- 1GIGA-CRC Human Imaging, GIGA Institute, University of Liège, Liège, Belgium
Abstract
Mind Blanking (MB) is a mental state characterized by the experience of a seemingly empty mind. This apparent 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. To date, it is not clear whether these two methods capture the same phenomenon neuronally. Here, we investigated whether probe-caught MB (pMB) and self-caught MB (sMB) converge on their behavioral properties and brain correlates. Twenty-two participants underwent 3T fMRI scanning while performing both a pMB and a sMB experience-sampling task. We compared the behavioral properties, BOLD activations and time-varying functional connectivity (FC) across the two approaches. We found that reporting frequencies of pMB and sMB were significantly correlated across individuals, and both MB reports were uniformly distributed over time, pointing towards a behavioral convergence across approaches. However, we observed a divergence in BOLD activations, as sMB recruited significantly greater activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) compared to pMB, likely reflecting the meta-awareness and metacognitive monitoring required for self-detecting a MB. Lastly, time-varying FC analysis revealed a convergence, with both pMB and sMB FC resembling a hyperconnectivity pattern compared to other content-full mental states, pointing towards low arousal FC. Together, our results show that sMB and pMB converge on overlapping neurobehavioral correlates. This positions the self-caught method as a complementary tool for studying MB without external interruption, while highlighting the role of meta-awareness in self-report detection.
Related
- Cophylogeny simulators are not interchangeable: similarities, differences and structural biases in synthetic host-symbiont
- COMPARATIVE PHENOMICS IN Limnospira platensis STRAINS REVEALS PHOTOBIOENERGETIC SIMILARITIES AND DIFFERENCES IN AMERICAN AND AFRICAN STRAINS
- A Tale of Two States: Similarities and Differences in Neuropeptide Signaling in Larval and Adult Drosophila.
- Foveation as self-supervision signal: Blur masks beat blank masks for learning robust visual representations
- Asymmetric Adaptation of Catch-up Saccades with Artificial Central Scotomas
BibTeX
@misc{aragondaud2026catch,
title = {{How to Catch a Blank Mind? Brain Similarities and Differences between Self- and Probe-Caught Mind Blanking}},
author = {A. Aragon-Daud and P. A. Boulakis and S. Mortaheb and G. Vandewalle and F. Collette and K. R. Patil and A. Demertzi and F. Raimondo},
howpublished = {bioRxiv},
year = {2026},
month = jun,
doi = {10.64898/2026.06.10.731344},
url = {https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.10.731344v3},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - How to Catch a Blank Mind? Brain Similarities and Differences between Self- and Probe-Caught Mind Blanking
AU - A. Aragon-Daud
AU - P. A. Boulakis
AU - S. Mortaheb
AU - G. Vandewalle
AU - F. Collette
AU - K. R. Patil
AU - A. Demertzi
AU - F. Raimondo
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/06/10
PB - bioRxiv
DO - 10.64898/2026.06.10.731344
UR - https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.64898/2026.06.10.731344v3
AB - Mind Blanking (MB) is a mental state characterized by the experience of a seemingly empty mind. This apparent 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. To date, it is not clear whether these two methods capture the same phenomenon neuronally. Here, we investigated whether probe-caught MB (pMB) and self-caught MB (sMB) converge on their behavioral properties and brain correlates. Twenty-two participants underwent 3T fMRI scanning while performing both a pMB and a sMB experience-sampling task. We compared the behavioral properties, BOLD activations and time-varying functional connectivity (FC) across the two approaches. We found that reporting frequencies of pMB and sMB were significantly correlated across individuals, and both MB reports were uniformly distributed over time, pointing towards a behavioral convergence across approaches. However, we observed a divergence in BOLD activations, as sMB recruited significantly greater activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC) compared to pMB, likely reflecting the meta-awareness and metacognitive monitoring required for self-detecting a MB. Lastly, time-varying FC analysis revealed a convergence, with both pMB and sMB FC resembling a hyperconnectivity pattern compared to other content-full mental states, pointing towards low arousal FC. Together, our results show that sMB and pMB converge on overlapping neurobehavioral correlates. This positions the self-caught method as a complementary tool for studying MB without external interruption, while highlighting the role of meta-awareness in self-report detection.
ER -