Can I sleep and be awake at the same time?

Each of us at least once, but was in a situation where suddenly felt discomfort in the neck, eyes began to close, and there was a sharp dip into the stage of sleep. When a person after this abruptly comes to, understands that he can not remember the last few moments, and in a panic begins to ask himself what has happened. Was he at that moment or completely unconscious?

What is a microson?

The good news is: if at that moment you were still unconscious, it was probably only for a few seconds. Neuroscientist Christoph Koch recently wrote in Scientific American that the human brain can unconsciously enter the phase of the microsnap, and at that moment the disconnection of our consciousness is literally happening with lightning speed, but within a few seconds a sudden awakening begins.

Is the microson a mistake of consciousness?

"You feel drowsy, your eyes get tired quickly, your eyelids grow heavy, you begin to lower and raise your head involuntarily, and then it falls and stays in one position. This is the error of your consciousness, "Koch writes. The microsnap phase can come suddenly. This mostly happens during monotonous activity: driving a car, in a boring lecture that does not represent any interest for a person, even during long boring negotiations. For example, in one of the studies, participants spent a lot of time (about an hour), sitting at the computer and looking at the monitor, doing something monotonous. During this time, the participants of the experiment had 79 episodes of microsnag, the duration of each was from 1.1 to 6.3 seconds.

What is a dream and a nap in fact?

Honestly, a dream is not at all what we imagine. We have a slightly different idea of this state. We are used to believe that the dream itself is divided into several parts, which we ourselves can ask and control. For example, we can consciously rest at night or take a nap during the day. But there is also a microson - this is a fleeting process. With him just everything is not so simple.

According to Koch, such a nap is not a binary state. At this point, you can actually stay awake, can sleep, or be somewhere in between the phases of sleep. Only so, otherwise it does not happen. For example, on the first night in a new place, part of the left hemisphere of the human brain during active sleep remains active. Perhaps this is a defensive reaction that keeps us on alert.

An experiment with animals was also conducted, during which it was found that during wakefulness they can also partially sleep. In a study that was published in the journal Nature in 2011, the authors described how they conducted tests with experimental laboratory rats, watched them during sleep, and described all the processes and phases. Koch also explained that during deep sleep, the process disappears from time to time, even some nerve cells stop any electrical activity for 300-400 milliseconds. In other words, some neurons were asleep, others were awake.

Now it became clear to us that the boundaries between sleeping and waking are fuzzy, constantly changing, and sometimes even not exist.