So this one came to me after a miserable weekend after surgery, I had a foley catheter in (its a catheter that is anchored in the bladder with a water balloon and is connected to a pee drainage bag), and in order to sleep I had to connect a big overnight pee bag and put it next to my bed. Now, I’m an active sleeper, I roll around and change positions a ton, so I was terrified of rolling over in my sleep and potentially yanking the catheter out, which would have been extremely painful at \*best\* and probably damaged my insides at worst.
Weirdly though, I slept still as stone, I barely moved for the 3 nights I had it in and I had no issues whatsoever. I’ve also noticed I do this if I fall asleep with my glasses or phone right next to me, I subconsciously avoid rolling over them in my sleep somehow and don’t move around as much.
How does that work? How does an unconscious body “understand” a danger/risk and avoid it?
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We like to think the our consciousness covers the entirety of the brain’s awareness. This is not correct. In ELI5 terms, as strange as it sounds, consciousness is only a tiny fraction of the brains total awareness. To simplify this, I will explain this as if our conscious mind and our brain are two separate entities, in reality they are not, but it makes it easier to explain it this way for “ELI5”.
Our brain constantly scans external stimuli gathered from all over our body, but only a tiny fraction of it is shared with the conscious mind. Parts of the brain that process and sort external information decide the importance of gathered information and notify the conscious mind about it, or not, accordingly. This is why you can go into a crowded room with hundreds of people talking, and still be able to hear if someone calls for your name. Your brain is basically tracking and processing all the conversations across the room (as long as the ears can hear it), but you only become aware of the fractions that your brain thinks is worth the conscious mind’s attention, like your name. We all had that moment where we suddenly got aware of an interesting conversation next table while not actively listening for it, this is because your brain was still tracking that conversation even before you got aware of it. This happens with all of our senses, where we are only aware of a fraction of the processed information our brain gathers.
To come back to your original question, when you sleep, you are not conscious but your brain is still aware. It knows that it should not roll due to the catheter. It is also the same reason why we don’t usually fall off the bed, or crush our pets while sleeping. Keep in mind our brain is capable of controlling our bodies without us being conscious about it. People who sleepwalk can do rather complex tasks without being conscious.
Of course, the same way that you can forget things while being conscious, your brain can also occasionally forget things while being unconscious, especially if it was something that you didn’t pay too much attention while being conscious.
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