Predicting lapses of attention with sleep-like slow waves.
Nature communications June 29, 2021 Thomas Andrillon, Angus Burns, Teigane Mackay et al.
Attentional lapses—moments when focus drifts to unrelated thoughts (mind wandering) or the stream of consciousness halts (mind blanking)—are linked to localized slow-wave brain activity resembling sleep. Healthy participants performed a task while high-density electroencephalography recorded their brain activity; random interruptions prompted them to report whether their mental state was task-focused, mind-wandering, or mind-blanking. Slow waves preceded reports of both mind wandering and mind blanking, and their location distinguished between sluggish and impulsive behaviors as well as between the two types of lapses. The findings suggest that attentional lapses share a common physiological origin: the emergence of local sleep-like activity within the awake brain.