How does the brain “zone out” and we ignore everything around us and think about absolutely nothing?
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Your brain is like a computer, now I must admit I know more about brains than I do computers (and neither knowledge is professional level) but your focus is somewhere between sensory processing and your memory. The stuff in your focus is the stuff thats being processed in your short term memory and your short term memory can get input from the outside world or from your long term memory. Your short term memory is kind of like your working memory and your long term memory is neatly filed away information, your brain doesnt see the difference between ‘past’ information or current information, it just recieves information to process and it starts working.
Now, what happens if you just opened your music and then start spamming the ‘new tab’ button on your computer or its running a really heavy game? It starts lagging, the game freezes. Same happens to your brain. Your brain doesnt really measure in scales, it judges things on many many micro decisions of good or bad, thats why really hot and really cold stuff can feel the opposite, its bad if its outside of the safe parameter. Zoning out or dissociation happens when your brain gets too much information it cant process: too much information it doesnt need to do anything with because something like that is already deeply ingrained? Your processing computer enters rest mode. Too much information to process? Your brain starts buffering, it cant make a decision on whats most important and does a little clearing of the working memory, dumping it on a ‘to be processed’ pile and picking up work again after wiping the table. That to be processed pile is often what causes our weird dreams and/or post-traumatic stress disorder, and why people often dont have much memory from really stressfull periods in their life
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