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Counciousness to sleep transition

nimzov

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It seems impossible to register in our memory the exact moment we transition from awake to sleep.

How close to the moment you fall asleep do you remember ? Seconds ? Minutes ?
 
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Estimating the time is very difficult, but sometimes I'm aware that my somewhat rational (;)) thoughts are turning into dream-like nonsense and I realise I'm drifting into sleep. But I only realise it because there's a lull where I've drifted back towards consciousness. Other times, I suppose, there's no lull and I'm straight into sleep without the awareness it's about to happen.
 
Sometimes my wife wakes me up to tell me I'm snoring. The strange thing is that, when this happens, I could swear that I am still awake. I am still aware of my surroundings (or at least I think I am), but just relaxed on my bed.
 
I tend to be aware of coming from sleep to awake. Like emerging from a dream, and sometimes I become aware that a voice has been narrating, causing the dream imagery which just depicts whatever it's been saying, as I wake up
For this reason and others, I have come to wonder if our inner voice ever really sleeps.

Normally I'm lost in thought falling asleep. Sometimes realizing I'm losing full awareness of what I'm thinking is the last thing I remember.
 
progressquest said:
Sometimes my wife wakes me up to tell me I'm snoring. The strange thing is that, when this happens, I could swear that I am still awake.
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I get that too. I think it's quite common, which doesn't make it any less weird when it happens.

Similarly, sometimes when my alarm wakes me up, it will interrupt a very distinct train of conscious thought I was having. Not a dream, just thoughts running through my head when you wouldn't expect there to be any. I suspect I'm just in the process of beginning to wake up when that happens, but again, that doesn't make it any less weird.

Probably the strangest was a time when I was on vacation with several people sharing a condo. I was in the next room over from a guy who I knew snored quite loudly, and as I was drifting off to sleep, I could hear him snoring. Then I noticed that his snoring was perfectly in sync with my own breathing. Then I thought, wait a second... I held my breath for a moment, and "he" stopped snoring. The realization that I was actually hearing myself woke me up completely.
 
I'm more often like a light switch. I'm awake, then I'm awake still thinking about the same stuff, but 75 minutes have passed. Kind of like a drunk who passes out in the middle of a sentence, then comes to later- finishing his sentence.
 
progressquest said:
Sometimes my wife wakes me up to tell me I'm snoring. The strange thing is that, when this happens, I could swear that I am still awake. I am still aware of my surroundings (or at least I think I am), but just relaxed on my bed.
Click to expand...

Yep. When I wake MrsB to tell her she's snoring she often says "I can't be, I'm awake".
 
I wonder if that will be the way I die - the trail of thought fading away and I will never even realize I am gone...

I think going to sleep is very similar to dying, although one cannot help notice how delicately consciousness is always present, even in sleep, how smooth the transition is...
 
Louigi Verona said:
I wonder if that will be the way I die - the trail of thought fading away and I will never even realize I am gone...

I think going to sleep is very similar to dying, although one cannot help notice how delicately consciousness is always present, even in sleep, how smooth the transition is...
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Unlike going to sleep, when you die you lose breathing, I can't imagine that this does not cause panic.
 
I wonder if consciousness to death transition does feel totally different than the one to sleep. Are most people scared at the moment of death?
 
nimzov said:
It seems impossible to register in our memory the exact moment we transition from awake to sleep.

How close to the moment you fall asleep do you remember ? Seconds ? Minutes ?
Click to expand...

Depends, as someone with disturbed sleep there is a sleep state I refer to as 'reverie' which lies between. I can drift to sleep from there or rouse to full wakefull.

But when I switch to sleep, I can't tell.
 
ExMinister said:
I wonder if consciousness to death transition does feel totally different than the one to sleep. Are most people scared at the moment of death?
Click to expand...

Considering that death is defined medically as when brain activity ceases, there'd no longer be a "you" to recall or even care about it.
 
I was told by a biologist that at the moment of death your brain produces lots of hormones that give you a feeling of pleasure and that if you are dying in your bed and not falling from an airplane, your last feelings would be paradise.

I can ask him for sources, but at the moment I have no links to studies.
 
Louigi Verona said:
I was told by a biologist that at the moment of death your brain produces lots of hormones that give you a feeling of pleasure and that if you are dying in your bed and not falling from an airplane, your last feelings would be paradise.

I can ask him for sources, but at the moment I have no links to studies.
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Well, it is a nice thought, but I doubt if this is something that can observed, because I doubt there is a sufficient number of people that die with probes stuck into their brains!

If it is correct, it would be a result of chance, because there is nothing in biology that would select for genes that cause a nicer death.
 
From what I understood, this has nothing to do with genes, but with the chemistry of brain and it was not done for any survival purpose, this chemistry is just there.

However, again, until I can support this with actual scientific research, this is just an anecdote.
 
I know that when I am close to sleep I will start to have audio hallucinations (I forget the correct term for that).

That is, I will literally be able to hear the people or situations I am thinking about. Impossible to do while awake.
 
Yeah, I have the same. It is extremely realistic. Our brain is cool hardware, I must say - as long as it runs correctly, that is!
 
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