: What is the state of our mind when we fall asleep? Is our mind/brain going ‘shut down’ and is if so, how can we wake up instantly?
In: Biology
Mind is an abstract concept with no absolute definition. But to answer your question with a physiological pov, your brains is going into maintenance and update mode. It sorts and process informations gathered and created during waking hours, keeps what it deems worthy to keep and discard the unnecessary. There’s other things happening but that’s one of the basic things that is happen to your brain. Also during sleep your brain switch to different state of mind and I think the only moments you can volunteerly wake up is when you dream.
It’s the opposite of shutting down really. When we’re asleep, our brains are buzzing with activity as regenerative activities take place, memory is consolidated, and garbage is metaphorically taken out.
It’s specific regions of our brain that operate in a suppressed state during most phases of sleep, and those regions are responsible for our “wakefulness”. Our ability to rapidly emerge from sleep in response to stimuli is due to the rapid reactivation of those regions and subsequent exit from sleep.
Your brain never “shuts down”, if it did, you would be dead. It does decrease activity, but not completely, and you still have your senses, so anything changing in your surroundings can still be noticed and woken up to.
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