Falling asleep

Falling asleep

It is not easy to pin point the transition between being awake and being asleep. It seems to be more of a gradual process than a sudden transition. We slowly become less aware of our surroundings.

 

Test subjects reacted to their own name when falling asleep, but no longer to that of others.

 

Everyone knows the abrupt muscle spasms of the legs or the arms (‘hypnic jerks’) that can occur when falling asleep. Sometimes hypnic jerks can be very strong and therefore extremely unpleasant for a partner. Hypnic jerks are natural reflexes that incidentally increase in strength in the event of stress, or when sleeping at an unusual time.

 

It is striking that memory function appears to change during the falling asleep phase. Test subjects who were woken up after one minute of sleep appear to be able to remember much more about the things that happened just before, than test subjects who were woken up after ten minutes of sleep. As a result, some people who like to read a few pages in bed just before going to sleep have no recollection upon waking of what they read just a couple of hours before.

 

It is our body temperature that is responsible for the timing of sleeping and waking, not the change between light and dark. Body temperature drops when falling asleep. To achieve this, the body releases moisture in the form of perspiration. This moisture evaporates on the skin, a process in which heat is removed from the body. The result: a drop in body temperature.