KEYNOTE: At the boundaries of mental state reportability

During resting conditions spontaneous experience is ongoing, dynamic, and rich in mental content taking the form of mental states. Mental states are transient cognitive or emotional occurrences that are described in terms of particular content (what the state is ‘about’) and the relation we bear to this content (e.g. imagining, remembering, fearing). Ongoing experience can also show moments of mind blanking during which there is a failure to report the content of thoughts, often accompanied by a post-hoc realization that our mind “went away”. Here, I will discuss the possibility of a contentless mind as this is reported in healthy, waking conditions and will delineate the brain physiology which underlies contentless phenomenology. This work essentially proposes that non-reportable mental events can happen during wakefulness, and challenges the view of the mind as a constant thought-oriented operator.