When I am falling asleep I often have what could be called “dreamlets” - spontaneous short visual sequences. They are quite dim, more akin to daydreams than normal dreams. They don’t have real plot, they are more of like evolving images or visualised flow of thoughts. They can be influenced at will, but they appear by themselves and sometimes are quite strange and surprising. When I am sufficiently tired, like when I was on train today, these images can appear few seconds after I close my eyes. Is there any name for this phenomenon? My impression is that this is not hypnagogic imagery, since from what I read in this forum, that tends to be vivid and intense.
Hypnagogic imagery can take many forms, and what you describe sounds like quite typical HI. It can be anything from a sentence or word flowing through your head to moving images. Do they usually disappear if you get too awake from focusing on them? Mine usually do.
Yeah, it seems quite essential to not try focusing on them too much. Anyway, I don’t get these that much when I am going to sleep in my bed – the train when I go home from work seems to be the best place to experience this borderland stuff. Sometimes I even experience hypnagogic jerk there. Anyway, isn’t HI supposed to be vivid?
That sounds exactly like what i’ve had, except they don’t happen very often for me. Reading your post just now made me remember my experience from last night when i hadn’t fallen asleep yet -
I kept seeing still images of people’s faces (some i knew) flashing in front of me as if a light shining on them was being switched on and off. Their timing and distance away from my own face was mostly random so it was alarming when they suddenly appeared very close up. Part of me seemed to be aware that it wasn’t real and i did have some influence over it.
I hadn’t realised HI could be like that as well.
I suppose there are different levels of intensity depending on how near you are to the point between waking/sleeping?
HI can be very vivid, or it can be very dim, or even just partial images. For some people it gets more vivid as they fall asleep, for others it just remains dim, or even just patterns or pieces of images. It can also be different from time to time.
don
I believe the origin for the images are the same wether it’s in a normal waking state or in the hypnogogic state. Whan I notice is that when I’m falling asleep, images are not only clearer, but much more stable. If i close m eyes now the images will be random, fleeting, and very fragmented and incomplete. Probably due to higher brain activity, more chaotic. Then for instance the other day i had a particularily stable HI. It was like actually seeing it even though I knew me eyes were closed. The images stayed the same for a while. While in a normal waking state it would probably have popped up and disappeared.
In other cases, I may have seen a dreamlet of moderate clarity and much more following a plot than daytime stuff would. I don’t know if this helps at all.
HI only comes when you are in the transition from awake to sleep. That is what hypnagogic means. If you have any type of images with your eyes closed, but you are not falling asleep, then they are not hypnagogic.
That is also true of HH. It only includes hallucinations that occur when you are falling asleep.
don
Basically yes.
HI occurs when you are falling asleep. It has to do with the transition between awake and sleep states. All hallucination’s are caused by something. It is a big difference if they are caused by lack of salt in your body, something that can cause very extreme hallucinations and death, or from falling asleep. What you, or someone else, needs to do based on the fact that you are having the hallucinations is very different, and could save your life in the second case. lack of salt does have other symptoms, and you do usually end up in a hospital long before it becomes life threatening, so it is not something that you need to worry about, but it also causes hallucinations.
It is very common to give symptoms an extension to the name to indicate where it comes from.
don
Hehehehe, I used to be able to fall asleep very happily by just watching the scenery, it usually started off with rad colors, and slowly evolves into actual images.
Part of me seemed to be aware that it wasn’t real and i did have some influence over it.
