Whenever I fall asleep while watching something, why does everything seem louder? Also, every time I’m half-awake why does time move faster? Like, it feels like I would blink once and the movie is already 40 minutes in.
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I’m not sure about the sound, but for time perception it’s interesting! Your mind is constantly receiving signals from your eyes, skin, muscles etc… it would constantly overwhelm us if our brains were not so great at sorting and dumping un needed information. Why you think that you close your eyes and open them and 20 minutes have passed is that during that time nothing important happened (determined by your brain). Your brain didn’t see any picture it was interested in, feel anything abnormal, and if your tired it was focusing on categorizing important information into long term memory. You still lived that 20 minutes, but since nothing really happened that was worth remembering, your brain simply forgot that you actually lived it so there’s nothing to remember. It’s the same reason how you can be driving on a road trip, then notice you don’t really remember the last 20 minutes of driving. You were paying attention that whole time, but because nothing you saw was important or needed (determined by your brain) it simply just deleted it.
If I had to guess about sound being louder, it’s probably an evolutionary trait. You would have an advantage if you were getting ready to fall asleep if you could hear a predator snap a branch or a foot step
As you might know, when you sleep, you go through a sleep cycle. Non-rem stages 1-3 and one REM.
Stage 1 and 2 are very light and you are aware of surroundings and have sense of time etc. Stage 3 is delta-slow wave sleep. It’s very deep. REM is when the most vivid dreams happen, but you can dream at any stage.
A sleep cycle usually lasts between 90 and 120 minutes. At the beginning of the night usually the cycles are shorter. What is probably happening is you are in stage 1 and 2 can and are aware of TV. Then you get into delta wave for some time (probably when you lose track of time) then when you get into REM the TV sounds loud again and wakes you up.
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