Decoding Mind-Blanking Using fMRI Functional Connectivity

Mind blanking (MB) is a mental state characterized by an absence of reportable mental content, often associated with a specific neurophysiological profile of diminished arousal and hyper brain connectivity (Boulakis & Demertzi, 2025; Mortaheb et al., 2022). As MB is notoriously difficult to assess through introspection alone, we here propose to objectively detected MB by its neural signatures. This project aims to develop a machine learning decoder to identify MB episodes based on their functional connectivity signatures in fMRI, thereby providing a tool to study MB independent of subjective report.