eli5 What happens in our body/brain when we naturally wake up? Is it like starting a PC, where pressing a button kickstarts all the processes?

Question

I was just wondering what happens when we wake up naturally, so not because of an alarm or being woken up by a loud noise or our partner or something.

In: 8

Answer 1

Thing is that we tend to use our everyday life as a metaphor regarding our body. In the era of steam engines people often used machine metaphors, as a frame of reference to the human body.
Now sometimes in some limited ways those metaphors may be useful or helpful, for example thinking of our memory as if a computer memory in a way may help understanding how our memory works. But it never should be taken as an actual truth.
As our body is not an actual steam engine, our body is not a computer either. And it definitely does not turn off when we sleep (on the contrary, it is very active), and does not kick start processes.