For a step by step of what is going on, we truthfully don’t know.
A lot of what our brains do, both when awake and when asleep, is still a mystery. We’ve figured out what sections seem to relate to what actions/activities. But how the hunk of meat actually turns electrical impulses into everything we experience. We still don’t know. We aren’t even 100% sure why we NEED to sleep.
But for general stuff, to start, your brain is never completely “off” or shut down. It is still active and processing sensory inputs (hence loud noises, bright lights, or being shaken wakes you up). So it’s not like the brain is completely shutting down and booting back up like a computer, it’s just going into, well, sleep mode, like a computer.
There are some processes we do know about, such as the paralysis our brains put over our bodies to keep us from moving around in our sleep. Which is what causes some people to get “sleep paralysis” when they wake up in the morning where their mind is awake, but the brain hasn’t yet unlocked that paralysis and you can’t move your arms/legs yet.
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