musingsonwomenshealth.com

Reflections on 40 years as a doctor in Women's Health

Thinking is the soul talking to itself


I am conscious. How do I know? Because I have to be conscious to know the answer. Although there may well be an occasional thought stuck to the bottom of the pot, it will float to the surface eventually if I’m patient. And if it is brief and happens only occasionally maybe it wouldn’t disturb me; maybe I wouldn’t bump into stuff. Anyway, is its temporary absence from the surface also an absence of consciousness, or does its evanescence actually allow something to persist way down at the bottom and of which I was not still conscious? Was its absence different than my continued presence when I close my eyes…?

Is it possible that there could be normal (but brief) gaps in consciousness -not while sleeping, or under anaesthesia; and not  just when the mind is simply wandering and takes time to respond to a question? The very existence of so called ‘mind blanking’ seems hard to believe…

Well, during fMRI studies of the brain in 2022, ‘mind blanking’ was  ‘associated with a specific pattern of hyperconnectivity. Instead of specific brain areas being in communication with certain other areas, there is a widespread, uniform increase in communication across the brain.’ Although occasional hyper-connectivity seems intuitive, ‘hyper-connectivity can be detrimental for consciousness because it reflects a lack of functional organization… Hyper-connectivity is a key feature of epileptic seizures, and it is also observed at sleep onset, when consciousness fades away.’[i] On first consideration, it sounds rather dangerous if you were on a ladder, or driving downtown in traffic or something, but I mean if it’s happening to everybody and not that many are getting injured…

But I digress. ‘Mind blanking mirrors sleepiness in other ways. It is associated with signs of decreased physiological arousal, such as smaller pupils of the eye and a slower heartbeat.’ In fact, ‘the idea that mind blanking might reflect a kind of sleep-like interruption of waking consciousness also helps make sense of the observation, by another research team, that adults and children with ADHD report mind blanking more frequently.’ Rather than the conventional wisdom that people with ADHD have too-full minds, rather than too-empty, ‘both adults and children with ADHD frequently experience sleep difficulties, which could cause sleep-like intrusions into their waking lives.’ I suppose that makes sense, eh…?

But are these are just studies though? I would have thought that the wild form of ‘mind blanking’ (if it really exists) would be sort of like blinking to clear the cornea of dust or tears: so quick and temporary that it would probably be missed by others -and even by the blanker. Of course I don’t mean to disparage practitioners of the meditative practice of nirodha–samāpatti which purports to teach followers how to empty their mind intentionally to reach a state of awareness unencumbered with an uncontrolled stream of thoughts. I have to suppose it is nothing like my impoverished attempts at meditation during which random thoughts constantly appear like water from a dripping tap.

No, for most of us these blanking episodes seem to be unconstrained and unpredictable; like riding a horse bareback, they are hard for most of us to control. Of course there is a difference between simply ‘being conscious’, and ‘being conscious of’ -that is, conscious of something: consciousness which has some form of content however fleeting. Still, I suppose you can be just conscious, though, eh? When your mind goes blank of its own accord, ‘you’ are still aware, even if you are not conscious of anything. But I figure that if you’re going to be conscious, it’d be wasted if it were simply like being in an dark hotel room and you were left holding a carefully packed suitcase or whatever.

However there is some thought that blanking might be similar to what are called sleep intrusions. ‘Sleep intrusions take the form of slow-wave brain activity directly implementing the restorative function of sleep. During sleep, slow waves rebalance synaptic weights, restore metabolic resources, and help evacuate metabolic waste.’ I’m sure I could use more of that sort of thing, but I’m not thrilled about the idea of blanking however briefly while I’m up and walking around. Still, I suppose if I’m not doing anything particularly interesting, maybe mind blanking would allow those reparative functions to be carried out during my wakeful blanks. It’d save a lot of time -like vacuuming the house while texting, or something…

And maybe those really intelligent people who seem to hesitate before answering my unintentionally convoluted questions are actually using a brief mind-blank to inspect the world outside of Plato’s cave in search of an appropriate Form with which to reply. Of course, they may just be flummoxed by my question.

Jason is like that; he shows up on the occasional Wednesday morning at the Food Court when a group of us meet for coffee. He lives by himself and I don’t think he has many other pressing social obligations. Perhaps his usual isolation prompts his hesitation to answer questions at the time they are asked. He seems to have to try to partially digest them first and, like a cow, regurgitate them only when they’re ready for his tongue again.

All of the coffee guys are used to that though, and often will engage in other conversations while they wait for Jason’s cud to make its way to his mouth.

Actually, I think the slowness of his responses are unrelated to mind blanking: they last too long, but the essay by the neuroscientist Thomas Andrillon that I’ve been quoting got me thinking about other things that may be going on. Jason doesn’t strike me as being at all unintelligent, and his answers (when they finally arrive) seem well-conceived and clever; it’s just that by the time they arrive, conversation has usually moved on to other things and with other people.

Jason doesn’t seem to mind though; I think he’s just happy to be among others rather than sitting at home by himself. I’m always glad to see him at the table, as well. There’s usually something quite enlightening about his answers, despite the delay -almost as if he’s considering the ramifications of my question and doesn’t want to answer them until he decides on the most appropriate response -unlike many of the other guys at the table for whom speed of response trumps content.

I usually make a point of waiting for his answer to a question I’ve posed rather than moving on with others at the table, and he actually thanked me for being considerate recently. He told me that many of the people he meets think he’s just stupid, or worse, mentally challenged. It’s why he generally avoids meetings like ours.

He explained that before answering, he likes to dissect the content of the question, why it was asked, and whether the questioner was just filling the air in front of him with words to be polite. Any answers are more important for some people than the discomfort of silence in response, he told me with an embarrassed grin on his face. “What do you think?”

“I like that…..” I eventually answered after a few seconds delay as I thought about how I sometimes hesitate before replying. “An intelligent answer requires time to formulate it properly…”

He merely nodded with a little smile on his face and a twinkle in his eye.

[i] https://psyche.co/ideas/what-your-minds-blank-moments-reveal-about-consciousness

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