Source<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nStage 1 of 5<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe first stage is light sleep wherein we drift in and out. Our eyes move very slowly, and muscle activity goes down. This is also the stage where we are prone to hypnic myoclonia \u2013 sudden muscle contractions preceded by a sensation of falling.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nStage 2 of 5<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nAs we drift into stage 2, our eye movement stops and brain waves slow down. The next 2 stages can be described as deep sleep. It is characterized by extremely slow brain waves (delta waves) interspersed with sleep spindles, or occasional bursts of rapid waves. It is difficult to awaken people who are in this stage.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nStage 3 of 5: REM Sleep<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe most interesting stage is the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) stage. This is the time we dream! Our breathing escalates and our eyes start jerking rapidly in various directions. It is believed that by some that dreams are cortex\u2019s (a part of brain that organizes and interprets information during consciousness) attempt to find meaning in random signals. And so, it is possible that the cortex tries to interpret random signals into a fragmented storyline. Our brain areas that retain memory and affect learning are also stimulated. Thus, sleeping aids in making connections and cementing certain memories in our psyche. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile these areas are afire with activity, other parts are shut off. One sleep cycle averages to around 100 minutes. Thus, in one night we go through several such cycles. The first REMs are relatively short, with the dream stage increasing in length as night progresses. REM is critical to quality sleep. Caffeinated drinks, certain drugs, alcohol and smoking affect sleep quality and rob us of restorative deep sleep and necessary REM sleep.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nSleep Paralysis & False Awakenings<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\nDuring REM, our voluntary muscles are signaled to relax. We experience a temporary paralysis of our limb muscles in REM stage. If this paralysis is somehow interfered with, people may act out their dreams \u2013 leading to say, hitting someone while striking a boundary in one\u2019s dream! It is also the source of REM sleep behavior disorders like sleepwalking. But this paralysis should not be confused with the phenomenon of sleep paralysis that occurs in some cases when a person is just falling asleep (predormital or hypnagogic) or just waking up (postdormital or hypnopompic). <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nThe people who experience it recount feelings of helplessness as they recognize their inability to move and a constriction on their chest. Such descriptions led to the belief that the said person was possessed by demons. Sleep paralysis, simply put, is the phenomenon of our minds waking up before our physical body. We’re still paralysed as a defence mechanism during sleep – but we’re mentally awake.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Illustration of false awakening<\/span> while sleeping <\/figcaption><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\nBut our mind can play games with us too. As healthy as dreaming is, it is probably one of the least understood phenomenon. This is made even more fascinating by its bizarreness. The outlandish occurrences in our dreams are attributed to possible neural connections that our imaginative brain makes. But what about the dreams that are too realistic?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A manifestation of this situation is a false awakening<\/strong>, a dream that is vivid in detail and descriptive of a normal schedule of the dreamer, which convinces the person that they are awake or even, in rare cases, convinces them that they have woken from a dream. These phenomena of false awakenings and dream inside a dream phenomenon have been a source of intrigue and screenplays. Inception<\/i> dealt with multiple dreams contained in other dreams, Waking Life<\/i> also represented false awakenings. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n But the peculiarity doesn\u2019t end here. While there are fragmented reported cases of conditions like the exploding head syndromes (imaginary noises when falling asleep or waking up) and precognitions (apparent dreams about events yet to occur), some studies about dreams lead to the disturbing world of schizophrenia. Some analysts believe that the scans showing active regions of the brain when dreaming in REM are comparable to scans of schizophrenics. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nWhile we ascribe our weird dreams to nerve circuits reaching out for some connections resulting in an amalgam of unrelated memories, in cases of schizophrenia and probably other mental impairments, these circuits flare up randomly when the person is awake. Simply put, the dream knob doesn\u2019t turn off for them even when they wake up. Conversely, we can say that our nightly dream excursions are our own slice of madness.<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\nSo, are you awake? Or are you dreaming? Scores of articles on the web try to give tips on how to ascertain our reality,<\/a> to check whether you are awake or dreaming, lucidly. Suffice to say that a thing like jumping off the roof to see if you are dreaming is a very dangerous act indeed (Again – Inception<\/i>, anyone?). Besides, it can be argued that our supposed reality is also a figment of imagination or a dream of an unknown entity but that is a debate for the philosophers. <\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n As of now, I can assure you that you are awake. Because I highly doubt that you dreamt up this article! Or maybe you did.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"We spend about a third of our lives in slumber. Before advances in neuroscience and biology,\u00a0it was believed\u00a0that a sleeping person is a passive, dormant being. Now we know that our body, especially our brains work over-time during our sleeping phase, furiously making and breaking neural connections. Sleeping is not just an act of retreat…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34177,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[630,629,628],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14927"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14927"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14927\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":37057,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14927\/revisions\/37057"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14927"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14927"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/entropymag.co\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14927"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}