Can We Ever Stop Thinking? 我们能够停止思考吗？

娅塞明·沙普拉克奥卢 杨京 马士奎

We often find ourselves in an endless loop of thoughts.

我們时常会陷入无尽的思考循环之中。

That Susan is so funny...oh， I need to bring the car to the wash tomorrow… did I turn off the stove... why is this person being so loud... my toe feels weird... I feel like I know that person... here comes the sun， doo-doo-doo-doo.

We often find ourselves in an endless thought loop. And every so often， we try to stop this endless flow of thoughts by telling ourselves to just stop thinking. But do we or can we ever really stop thinking？

It depends on how you define “thinking，” said Michael Halassa， an assistant professor in the department of brain and cognitive sciences at MIT. A thought， which is the result of chemical firing between brain cells， can happen both on the conscious and unconscious level， he said.

The type of thinking we are aware of， such as the endless thoughts that pop up when were trying to sleep， can， in theory， be silenced. Thats presumably what meditation is all about， Halassa said.

But even though thats what meditators strive to do—its not clear how much of a blank state they can actually achieve. “I dont know if [completely stopping thinking] is theoretically possible and if it is， I think that would be incredibly difficult to test，” said Julia Kam， a cognitive scientist at the Knight Lab at the University of California， Berkeley.

But its clear that “meditators are a lot more tuned into what their thoughts are，” Kam said. “So when theyre supposed to be focused on something and their mind shifts away， then theyre just a lot better at picking up on1 that shifting of attention.”

Theres a difference between having a thought， and being aware that youre having a thought， she said. So if you ask someone what theyre thinking about and they respond with “nothing，” they could just not be aware that theyre having thoughts， Kam said. For instance， you could be deeply in thought about a relationship or an upcoming test， and you only become aware of it when someone taps you on the shoulder and snaps you out of it， she said. People who are thinking about “nothing” could also be having stream of consciousness thoughts that dont tell a coherent story， Halassa said.

But the brain never actually stops “thinking” in a broader sense. Most thoughts are actually happening in the background without us being aware of them， and “theres not really a way to turn these things off，” Halassa said.