I’d like to start this document off by saying that I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been researching neuroscience for thirty years, and it’s never stopped amazing me. In fact, the only time I had a different emotion toward the subject of science was when I discovered something strange while running tests for an upcoming board meeting. I work for a pharmaceutical company and we had our yearly review last week.
You see, the company that funded my team’s research had knowledge that we were looking into brain activity during sleep. This is nothing new, but we had some pretty advanced stuff to work with. I’m sure everything I’m about to explain will come into the light eventually. When that time comes, I hope we can all live our lives just like before. But optimism aside, I don’t think that will be possible.
During one uneventful day, my team and I were going over some pretty basic procedures. I’ll spare most of the scientific jargon and get straight to the point. We found a strange anomaly during a sleep pattern. Obviously when you sleep, your body goes into a temporary paralysis, but your mind carries on functioning. This is why we dream, as our minds are active from birth, until the day we die. No activity in the brain means you are not active for good, period. This strange anomaly can only really be described as a huge spike in the deep, deep, deep subconscious; like a threading needle in the ocean. Good luck to anyone out there in this god-forsaken field finding it. This activity reaches the deepest part of our mind during sleep, and ONLY during sleep. It happens once, at the very first moment of loss of consciousness, and stops almost as quickly. This happened on every new patient, in every test. At first, we were all shocked, as this was an incredible breakthrough, but it just as quickly turned to fear.
This surge of emotion on patients was incredibly distressing to say the least. The sheer amount of turmoil brought to a person during this fleeting moment seemed like a sick joke. Imagine it like this; this one moment, that lasted less than a second, that could bring so much discomfort to a person, that they could go into shock if experienced for up to eight seconds. Some would be able to handle it for less, some for longer. I have reason to believe that this strange spike has a part to play in death during sleep. People often believe death while being asleep to be peaceful, but research backs up that as you age, your mental health slowly decays. This is a fact. With this in mind, what if your brain becomes weaker and weaker because of this event, so that eventually, one second is all that it takes before it kills you. But, the point is, you could die from this sensation racing through your brain, but you don’t, because it usually only lasts for one second, two if you’re unlucky. This is durable while you’re younger. Now, you could contextualize this as something more tangible: a dream. Now I’m not talking about a dream where someone shoots you, or you fall from a great height but you wake up at the last moments. Those are dreams, being pretty standard and ordinary. However, this other dream is not really that at all. But for the sake of being able to comprehend this, that’s how I shall describe it. Imagine being trapped in a box where you’re unable to move your body for thousands of years, getting each limb ripped from the socket, three-hundred large spiders pouncing on you, and having everyone you ever knew or loved destroyed because of your actions. I am not exaggerating, but based on your own personality, each time this anomaly happens, a variation of these general, visceral emotions will play in your mind. Simplifying even more, you could imagine it as super-condensed, super-effective, mental torture.
Your brain can perceive time in very different ways to how you’re perceiving it now. One second can feel like hours while asleep. You don’t really have any passage of time while you’re fast asleep in bed, right? Now you might be asking: “Why don’t I remember this experience now, while I’m awake?” Even though I don’t have a definitive answer, it’s just simply forgotten before you’ve woken up. In fact, you’ve forgotten it the instance it’s over. When you wake up after a dream, you pretty much forget it straight after. It’s similar to that, but at a more extreme level. No matter what, It did happen, and it’s going to happen again tonight, and every other night you sleep. It is inevitable. I’m not trying to frighten anyone, but I felt as though I needed to share my research with the world. I find it difficult to sleep from time to time knowing what I know. What scares me more is that I don’t have any control over this, and that I know what’s coming, but will never be prepared for it. Forgetting the experience is awful too, as strange as that sounds. It almost feels as though tonight I will die, and be reborn as a copy of myself: the version of me that will remember, and the version of me who gets to forget and live for the rest of the day. The sudden emotional impact that will be inflicted upon me in a few hours will almost destroy my mind completely. I will have to endure it also, even though I will have no memory of the event, it will still have happened. Almost like a lobotomy of my senses, ever expanding. I hope we can all live with this knowledge, and know that just like in death, you are not alone. If you want my hypothesis into why this happens, I’d take a wild guess that it’s our brain’s way of keeping active for our unconscious self. The amount of stress that would be put onto an organic machine to be powered down but remain on standby, self recharging at the same time, would be huge. I believe this is why.
Animal testing shows none of the same symptoms we experience, and I will be looking into why immediately.
Lastly, if you’re reading this at night, then take solace that by the morning, you will not remember what happened during your rest. If you’re reading this in the day, then don’t take this time for granted, as you have gone through so much to be here.
I’d like to start this document off by saying that I know what I’m talking about. I’ve been researching neuroscience for thirty years, and it’s never stopped amazing me. In fact, the only time I had a different emotion toward the subject of science was when I discovered something strange while running tests for an upcoming board meeting. I work for a pharmaceutical company and we had our yearly review last week.
You see, the company that funded my team’s research had knowledge that we were looking into brain activity during sleep. This is nothing new, but we had some pretty advanced stuff to work with. I’m sure everything I’m about to explain will come into the light eventually. When that time comes, I hope we can all live our lives just like before. But optimism aside, I don’t think that will be possible.
During one uneventful day, my team and I were going over some pretty basic procedures. I’ll spare most of the scientific jargon and get straight to the point. We found a strange anomaly during a sleep pattern. Obviously when you sleep, your body goes into a temporary paralysis, but your mind carries on functioning. This is why we dream, as our minds are active from birth, until the day we die. No activity in the brain means you are not active for good, period. This strange anomaly can only really be described as a huge spike in the deep, deep, deep subconscious; like a threading needle in the ocean. Good luck to anyone out there in this god-forsaken field finding it. This activity reaches the deepest part of our mind during sleep, and ONLY during sleep. It happens once, at the very first moment of loss of consciousness, and stops almost as quickly. This happened on every new patient, in every test. At first, we were all shocked, as this was an incredible breakthrough, but it just as quickly turned to fear.
This surge of emotion on patients was incredibly distressing to say the least. The sheer amount of turmoil brought to a person during this fleeting moment seemed like a sick joke. Imagine it like this; this one moment, that lasted less than a second, that could bring so much discomfort to a person, that they could go into shock if experienced for up to eight seconds. Some would be able to handle it for less, some for longer. I have reason to believe that this strange spike has a part to play in death during sleep. People often believe death while being asleep to be peaceful, but research backs up that as you age, your mental health slowly decays. This is a fact. With this in mind, what if your brain becomes weaker and weaker because of this event, so that eventually, one second is all that it takes before it kills you. But, the point is, you could die from this sensation racing through your brain, but you don’t, because it usually only lasts for one second, two if you’re unlucky. This is durable while you’re younger. Now, you could contextualize this as something more tangible: a dream. Now I’m not talking about a dream where someone shoots you, or you fall from a great height but you wake up at the last moments. Those are dreams, being pretty standard and ordinary. However, this other dream is not really that at all. But for the sake of being able to comprehend this, that’s how I shall describe it. Imagine being trapped in a box where you’re unable to move your body for thousands of years, getting each limb ripped from the socket, three-hundred large spiders pouncing on you, and having everyone you ever knew or loved destroyed because of your actions. I am not exaggerating, but based on your own personality, each time this anomaly happens, a variation of these general, visceral emotions will play in your mind. Simplifying even more, you could imagine it as super-condensed, super-effective, mental torture.
Your brain can perceive time in very different ways to how you’re perceiving it now. One second can feel like hours while asleep. You don’t really have any passage of time while you’re fast asleep in bed, right? Now you might be asking: “Why don’t I remember this experience now, while I’m awake?” Even though I don’t have a definitive answer, it’s just simply forgotten before you’ve woken up. In fact, you’ve forgotten it the instance it’s over. When you wake up after a dream, you pretty much forget it straight after. It’s similar to that, but at a more extreme level. No matter what, It did happen, and it’s going to happen again tonight, and every other night you sleep. It is inevitable. I’m not trying to frighten anyone, but I felt as though I needed to share my research with the world. I find it difficult to sleep from time to time knowing what I know. What scares me more is that I don’t have any control over this, and that I know what’s coming, but will never be prepared for it. Forgetting the experience is awful too, as strange as that sounds. It almost feels as though tonight I will die, and be reborn as a copy of myself: the version of me that will remember, and the version of me who gets to forget and live for the rest of the day. The sudden emotional impact that will be inflicted upon me in a few hours will almost destroy my mind completely. I will have to endure it also, even though I will have no memory of the event, it will still have happened. Almost like a lobotomy of my senses, ever expanding. I hope we can all live with this knowledge, and know that just like in death, you are not alone. If you want my hypothesis into why this happens, I’d take a wild guess that it’s our brain’s way of keeping active for our unconscious self. The amount of stress that would be put onto an organic machine to be powered down but remain on standby, self recharging at the same time, would be huge. I believe this is why.
Animal testing shows none of the same symptoms we experience, and I will be looking into why immediately.
Lastly, if you’re reading this at night, then take solace that by the morning, you will not remember what happened during your rest. If you’re reading this in the day, then don’t take this time for granted, as you have gone through so much to be here.