In our five-part series Understanding Exams, we'll look at the purpose of exams, whether they can be taken online, overcoming exam anxiety, and effective review techniques. It's a pattern that many of us have probably experienced in the past. You prepare for an exam and all the information seems coherent and simple. Then you take an exam and suddenly all the information you learned is gone. You fight to get something out, anything, but the more you fight, the further away the information feels. The dreaded blank mind.
So what is going on?
To understand what happens during a mind blank, there are three regions of the brain that we need to become familiar with. The first is the hypothalamus. For all intents and purposes, we can think of the hypothalamus as the bridge between your emotions and your physical sensations. In short, this part of the brain has strong connections to the endocrine system, which, in turn, is responsible for the type and amount of hormones that flow throughout the body. The second is the hippocampus. A subcortical structure, the hippocampus, plays an incredibly important role in both the learning and retrieval of facts and concepts. We can conceive of the hippocampus as a kind of memory gate through which all information must pass to enter and leave the brain.
The third is the PFC prefrontal cortex. Located behind your eyes, this is the calm, cool, and rational part of your brain. All the things that suggest that you as a human being are in control are largely mediated here, things like working memory, the ability to retain and manipulate information in your mind, impulse control, the ability to dampen responses from unwanted behavior, decision making, the ability to select an appropriate response among competing possibilities, etc.
How does a blank mind happen?
When you are preparing for an exam in an environment that is predictable and relatively low risk, you can engage in cold cognition. This is the term given to logical and rational thought processes. In our particular case, when you are studying at home sitting in your comfortable bed listening to your favorite music, the hypothalamus slows down the production and release of key stress hormones described below, while the PFC and hippocampus confidently move forward unhindered. .
However, when you enter a somewhat unpredictable and high-stakes exam situation, you enter the realm of hot cognition. This is the term given to non-logical and emotionally driven thought processes. Hot cognition is usually activated in response to a clear threat or a highly stressful situation. So an exam can serve to trigger a cascade of unique thoughts, for example
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