Why does the human body jerk/shock itself awake sometimes while trying to sleep?
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For me, it sometimes feels like the parts of my brain related to proprioception (knowing where your body is in space) fall asleep before the threat-identifying parts and conscious parts. The stillness of laying in bed causes a lack of sensory input, so my proprioception has no new information to process. This can end up feeling like I’m floating or falling, so my threat-identifying parts of my brain force me to make a sudden movement just to verify that I’m still grounded.
I’d guess that humans, being apes, are just particularly sensitive to the sensation of falling out of trees. Our brains are hard-wired to constantly watch for this danger, especially when sleeping (since our ancestors slept in trees), so we can perceive falling even when it isn’t happening if enough sensory input suggests that it could (like Richie’s Plank Experience in VR). I assume this hard-wired sensitivity to the possibility of falling is also what causes a fear of heights for many.
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