Why Our Brains Hallucinate As We Fall Asleep

Have you ever found yourself seeing images right before falling asleep? You might be experiencing hypnagogia! Learn more about what causes our pre-sleep hallucinations in this new episode of SciShow, hosted by Hank Green!

----------
----------
Dooblydoo thanks go to the following Patreon supporters: Kevin Bealer, Mark Terrio-Cameron, KatieMarie Magnone, Inerri, D.A. Noe, Charles Southerland, Fatima Iqbal,
سلطان الخليفي, Nicholas Smith, Tim Curwick, Scott Satovsky Jr, Philippe von Bergen, Bella Nash, Chris Peters, Patrick D. Ashmore, Piya Shedden, Charles George
----------
Looking for SciShow elsewhere on the internet?
----------
Sources:

[ukulelerapboi]

One time I was falling asleep in class and I heard a voice say "you can't be my son you're a fish"

[thisismyname]

One time my boyfriend was so tired I told him to go to sleep and good night and he said
“Have a very long pause) pepperoni”
Then he was asleep. He didn’t believe me when I told him the next morning.

[Dwohman]

What's crazy is waking up from a dream and then waking up from that dream

[eldritchvoided]

oh so this is why I sometimes hear voices talking very clearly when I’m about to fall asleep even though no one is actually talking nearby, nice to know it’s fairly normal

[guanlinnie]

my worst experience was when I was falling asleep and I hallucinated someone whispering right next to me ‘he has a kiwi on his cheek’, I’ll never get over that

[Morpheuss]

Sleeping is really "fake it til you make it" most of the times.

[tommymckiddy]

That video actually explains a lot of WTF moments I've had while falling asleep.

[bricklego]

I go through this when I’m super tired, and I’m glad its normal because as an anxiety and depression sufferer it makes me think I’m going crazy

[AJDaBaws]

Once I heard a violin suspense sound when I was trying to sleep...

It was terrifying

[bluewhaleking]

Sometimes I’ll imagine that I’m walking and misstep or fall, which startles me awake

[funkydozer]

What fascinates me is how noises such as, say, a door slamming or a dog barking outside - noises that we cannot possibly know are going to happen - can coincide EXACTLY with a particular point within a long and vivid dream, usually the point the dream ends and we wake up.

[ironbarsjack]

Hypnagogia is my favorite pastime as I enjoy my mind in altered states. For me it’s mostly like daydreams but super vivid. It’s different from dreaming because I often struggle to recall dreams after a while. When I do this hypnagogia thing it’s typically in the middle of the day so everyone is awake and any sound pulls me out of it but I drift back into it within seconds and I can do this for as long as I want or until it’s completely quiet and I have nothing anchoring me to stay awake.

[kate-mviq]

I played chess against the computer for like 4 hours straight and later when one of my family members walked in the room, I said "wait that was an illegal move."

[Jasperidone]

From now on I'll say "I'm Hypnagogic" instead of saying "I hear like a wooshing sound and see weird images before I go to sleep. I also vibrate"

[tcpnick]

Hearing random phrases when im falling asleep constantly happens to me, to the point that I actually find it kind of comforting because I know im about to fall asleep.

[mrhicks]

As a musician, I'll sometimes hear little melodies in my head when I'm about to fall asleep, which promptly wake me up and I can't get it out of my head until I record it.

[erinp.]

When I was a teen I worked at a movie theater. After a busy night, when trying to fall asleep I would sometimes suddenly jump awake thinking I was at work and needed to get different things for customers.

[plazamm]

I had exploding head syndrome twice. I was only just going to sleep (I must of already been dozing off) when I heard a loud explosion from outside. I this made me panic and look out my window to look for smoke or other signs of a bomb or gunshot. To add on to my paranoia, the sky was a dark red. (I don't know why) because I was so sleep deprived, I thought that WWIII had started and I just thought "welp, this is going to happen" and crawled back into bed.

[seersha]

I often hear different people say/call my name over and over when I'm falling asleep

[Gruximillian]

When I was a student at the college and preparing a math exam, while I was falling to sleep I started doing integral calculus using people instead of variables/functions. It made so sense while I was in that state!!! :D