Have you ever felt your body suddenly jerk just as you were falling asleep?
This strange sensation is called a hypnic jerk, and it’s actually very common. Scientists believe hypnic jerks occur during the transition between wakefulness and sleep, when the nervous system begins shutting down muscle activity. Sometimes, the brain misinterprets relaxation as a sign that you’re falling, triggering a sudden muscle contraction to “catch” you.
Factors like stress, anxiety, caffeine, sleep deprivation, and physical exhaustion can increase the chances of experiencing these sleep twitches. While they may feel alarming, hypnic jerks are generally harmless and considered a normal part of human sleep physiology.
This phenomenon reveals how complex the brain’s sleep control system really is — even small changes in neural signals can create surprising physical reactions.
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