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From: young@alw.nih.gov (Jeff Young)
Newsgroups: sci.bio
Subject: Re: Reply to Twitching/Pimples
Message-ID: <1025@nih-csl.nih.gov>
Date: 28 Feb 91 22:12:34 GMT
References: <1991Feb26.143844.12561@lonex.radc.af.mil>
Sender: news@nih-csl.nih.gov
Reply-To: young@alw.nih.gov (Jeff Young)
Organization: National Inst. of Health
Lines: 23

In article <1991Feb26.143844.12561@lonex.radc.af.mil>, vanderwerkend@lonex.radc.af.mil (Dan Vanderwerken) writes:
|> I often find that the medical community doesn't have solid answers for questions
|> like these...maybe because twitching doesn't cause serious harm/death, and
|> if it's not that serious why worry about it?  I've twitched and jumped a
|> few times in the past just prior to falling asleep and this is what I've
|> noticed:
|> 
|> *  I usually twitch in response to a dream.  For example, my most violent
|> jumps have been a response to a dream that I've fallen down (just as I'm
|> drifting off to sleep).
|> 
|> *  I stayed up all night prior to my first college chemistry class...as the
|> professor was exploding hydrogen filled balloons, I started to drift off
|> to sleep.  I dreamed my hand was burning and I "jumped" awake.

I believe that it's called eidetic imagery, a pseudo-dream state that you
enter into before falling asleep.  I always find myself in motion and at
some point the floor disappears causing me to jump.

-- 

	jy 
	young@alw.nih.gov