Natural Freedom

Highlights
Ongoing experience comes in shades with varying richness of mental content. Mind blanking (MB) implies that there can be moments that are seemingly devoid of mental content.
MB is gaining attention as a reportable mental state. The multiple definitions it has received point to its current conceptual and methodological ambiguities.
MB may be phenomenologically diverse – different types can bear similarities and differences to 'empty minds', such as during meditative practices and sleep (white dreams).
MB reports have distinguishable neurobehavioral profiles, pointing to arousal as a key foundational backbone for MB reportability.
We propose a mechanistic account in which MB is the end-result of physiological, neural, and cognitive changes, which provides insights for future empirical and phenomenological research of MB.