Hi,
I just fell asleep in class with the camera off and when the professor called my name to make sure my group was ready to present I immediately woke up to say that I was in the lecture and almost had a heart attack because missing this specific lecture is an automatic fail. I wanted to ask anyone as to why we wake up if someone calls our name even when we’ve been asleep for 10+ minutes, but don’t wake up when hearing other people’s names or the lecture content.
In: Biology
Probably the same reason I sleep better with the TV on or other ambient noise but still wake up to an “abnormal” sound.
Oh haha TIL I guess. I’ll use people’s names from now on instead of yelling ‘WAKE UP!’ and shaking them.
Its a psychological trigger. By telling from when you are a baby a word that refers to them, they associate it into their mind.
I’m 21, and for 21 years I have been called Gaybriel. For 21 years or so, when I heard gaybriel i knew it referred to me. For 21 years it is engraved in my mind to respond to that name.
Also when you are asleep, your unconscious is still “awake”, it is a heritage from when we were predated by animals. If we sensed danger, we had to wake up to escape it.
So when someone says your name while sleeping, your unconscious lights everything in your brain and tells you something requires specifically you.
When I’m sleeping sometimes I hear my mom quickly say my name like she’s in the room but she passed away 8 years ago. It always brings me out of a deep sleep.
You can get to the point, if you really work on it, where you can train your brain to listen for specific sounds or words.
I used to be a firefighter and worked at a larger house with 3 trucks and 3 crews. We would rotate every shift, randomly, between which assignment we would get and which truck we were on. Different every day. But when we went to sleep, after a while, I’d only wake up in the middle of the night if my specific truck I was on that shift was called out. Some nights your truck goes a dozen times a night and sometimes not at all. I’d sleep super hard through the calls that didn’t involve the truck I was assigned to that day.
However, now as an ex firefighter, I’ll wake up and run out of my room in the middle of the night if I hear anything that resembled our tones back in the day.
Pretty wild stuff and not too dissimilar to what you’re talking about. The amygdala is a power thing and you can basically train it.
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