You may have experienced a falling sensation accompanied by an involuntary twitch or startle that wakes you up again when you are about to fall asleep. If you have experienced this feeling, fear not; you are not alone. The topic went viral on Twitter this week after writer Holly Seddon tweeted and said others had experienced the same thing.
As Seddon points out, this phenomenon is known as “hypnic twitches” (or “sleep startles”), and the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke describes it as “sudden muscle contractions” similar to jumping that comes with a startle. This feeling usually comes after the feeling of falling. Studies investigating this phenomenon note that these usually occur during light sleep, do not always wake you up, and are often accompanied by vivid dreams or hallucinations.
It is stated that about 70 percent of people experience harmless sudden contractions at some point. But we don’t know for sure what causes them. One of these reasons is that your brain misinterprets the relaxation your body experiences as you fall asleep and wakes you up so you can cope with gravity.
In one of the amusing additions to this theory, he proposes that this response dates from a time when our ancestors lived in trees. “A common hypothesis is that it is an archaic reflex that the brain misinterprets the muscle relaxation that accompanies the onset of sleep as a sign that the sleeping primate has fallen from the tree,” explains a review on the subject.
Also, this reflex can be of selective value by having the sleeper readjust or revise the sleeping position in a nest or on a branch to ensure that there is no falling.
There isn’t much evidence behind this claim, but rest assured that hypnic twitching is harmless.
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