Each of us at least once, but was in such a situation when suddenly there was discomfort in the neck, the eyes began to close, and a sharp plunge into the stage of sleep began. When a person after this abruptly comes to his senses, he realizes that he cannot remember the last few moments, and in a panic begins to ask himself what happened. Was he dreaming at this moment or was he completely unconscious?
What is microsleep?
The good news is that if you were unconscious at this point, it was probably only for a few seconds. Neuroscientist Christoph Koch recently wrote in Scientific American that the human brain can unconsciously enter the microsleep phase, and at this moment our consciousness is literally turned off, but after a few seconds there is a sudden awakening.
Microsleep - a mistake of consciousness?
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“You feel sleepy, your eyes get tired quickly, your eyelids get heavy, you start to involuntarily lower and raise your head, and then it still drops and lingers in one position. These are the mistakes of your consciousness,”Koch writes. The microsleep phase can occur suddenly. This mainly happens during monotonous activities: driving a car, at a boring lecture that is of no interest to a person, even during long boring negotiations. For example, in one study, participants spent a lot of time (about an hour) sitting at a computer and looking at a monitor, doing something repetitive. During this time, participants in the experiment experienced 79 episodes of microsleep, each duration ranging from 1.1 to 6.3 seconds.
What are sleep and nap really?
To be honest, sleep is not at all what we imagine. We have a slightly different idea of this state. We used to believe that the dream itself is divided into several parts that we can set and control ourselves. For example, we can consciously rest at night or take a nap during the day. But there is also micro-sleep - this is a fleeting process. It's not that simple with him.
According to Koch, such a nap is not a binary state. At this point, you can actually be awake, you can sleep, or be somewhere in the middle of sleep phases. Only this way, it does not happen otherwise. For example, on the first night in a new place, part of the left hemisphere of the human brain remains active during deep sleep. Perhaps it is a defensive reaction that keeps us on alert.
An experiment was also conducted with animals, during which it was found that while awake, they too can partially sleep. In the study, which was published in the journal Nature in 2011, the authors described how they conducted tests with laboratory rats, observed them during sleep, and described all the processes and phases. Koch also explained that during deep sleep, all processes fade from time to time, even some nerve cells stop any electrical activity for 300-400 milliseconds. In other words, some neurons were asleep while others were awake.
Now it has become obvious to us that the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness are fuzzy, constantly changing, and sometimes do not even exist.
