Variations of autonomic arousal mediate the reportability of mind blanking occurrences

Abstract

Mind blanking (MB) is the inability to report mental events during unconstraint thinking. Previous work shows that MB is linked to decreased levels of cortical arousal, indicating dominance of cerebral mechanisms when reporting mental states. What remains inconclusive is whether MB can also ensue from autonomic arousal manipulations, pointing to the implication of peripheral physiology to mental events. Using experience sampling, neural, and physiological measurements in 26 participants, we first show that MB was reported more frequently in low arousal conditions, elicited by sleep deprivation. Also, there was partial evidence for a higher occurence of MB reports in high arousal conditions, elicited by intense physical exercise. Transition probabilities revealed that, after sleep deprivation, mind wandering was more likely to be followed by MB and less likely to be followed by more mind wandering reports. Using classification schemes, we found higher performance of a balanced random forest classifier trained on both neural and physiological markers in comparison to performance when solely neural or physiological were used. Collectively, we show that both cortical and autonomic arousal affect MB report occurrences. Our results establish that MB is supported by combined brain-body configurations, and, by linking mental and physiological states, they pave the way for novel embodied accounts of spontaneous thinking. ‘The stage 1 protocol for this Registered Report was accepted in principle on 02/01/23. The protocol, as accepted by the journal, can be found at: 10.17605/OSF.IO/SH2YE’ Techniques: Life sciences techniques, Biophysical methods [Electrocardiography - EKG]; Life sciences techniques, Biophysical methods [Electroencephalography - EEG]; CTS received date: 27.11.2024.