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Concept
Hypnagogia
Summary
Hypnagogia is the transitional state from wakefulness to sleep, also defined as the waning state of consciousness during the onset of sleep. Its opposite state is described as hypnopompia the transitional state from sleep into wakefulness. Mental phenomena that may occur during this "threshold consciousness" phase include hypnagogic hallucinations, lucid dreaming, and sleep paralysis.
The word hypnagogia is sometimes used in a restricted sense to refer to the onset of sleep, and contrasted with hypnopompia, Frederic Myers's term for waking up. However, hypnagogia is also regularly employed in a more general sense that covers both falling asleep and waking up. Indeed, it is not always possible in practice to assign a particular episode of any given phenomenon to one or the other, given that the same kinds of experience may occur in both as people drift in and out of sleep.
Other terms for hypnagogia, in one or both senses, that have been proposed include "presomnal" or "anthypnic sensations", "visions of half-sleep", "oneirogogic images" and "phantasmata", "the borderland of sleep", "praedormitium", "borderland state", "half-dream state", "pre-dream condition", "sleep onset dreams", "dreamlets", and "wakefulness-sleep transition" (WST).
Threshold consciousness (commonly called "half-asleep" or "half-awake", or "mind awake body asleep") describes the same mental state of someone who is moving towards sleep or wakefulness but has not yet completed the transition. Such transitions are usually brief but can be extended by sleep disturbance or deliberate induction, for example during meditation.
Transition to and from sleep may be attended by a wide variety of sensory experiences. These can occur in any modality, individually or combined, and range from the vague and barely perceptible to vivid hallucinations.
Among the more commonly reported, and more thoroughly researched, sensory features of hypnagogia are phosphenes which can manifest as seemingly random speckles, lines or geometrical patterns, including form constants, or as figurative (representational) .
Official source
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