Microsleep and Automatic behavior

 

When I think about microsleeps and automatic behavior, one of the first examples that comes to mind is something that happened to me my freshman year of high school during a biology test.  Looking over my test, I discovered that I had done something strange: the first few problems on the first page and all of the problems on the second page were correct.  However, I had completed all of the problems on the first page as if they were all the same as the first few problems, which made absolutely no sense because the problems were so different.  Essentially, I had gone through and done the mathematical process from the first few questions to the rest of the problems (for example, doing multiplication on addition problems and so forth).  I quickly realized what must have happened because the mistake was so stupid and I knew this stuff cold: unfortunately, I had only been truly awake for the first few problems and the second page.  The rest of the problems I completed without full conscious awareness during a microsleep, only to wake up when I turned the page.  I was very upset, but I didn’t know how to explain what had happened to my teacher because it just seemed hard to prove and so I was stuck with a terrible grade that I had to pay for for the rest of the semester.  

What I just related for you is an example of automatic behavior during a microsleep.  Basically, my brain fell partly asleep while I was doing a monotonous task, however I didn’t realize that I was partly asleep and continued working, but without conscious thought.

Another example of automatic behavior during a microsleep is what used to happen to me if I was struggling to stay awake during a long lecture: I would partially fall asleep for a few minutes even though my eyes were open and though I continued to write.  Then, I would look down and realize that what I had just written was complete jibberish – or my handwriting was so bad it was illegible.  Not realizing I had fallen asleep, I had continued to “take notes,” until a few minutes later I was jolted awake by something as simple as a noise or my pen starting to fall out of my hand or what have you.

According to one government fact sheet on Narcolepsy, up to 4o% of patients with Narcolepsy experience such automatic behavior during such microsleeps.  Usually an episode is very short, lasting only a number of seconds or a few minutes, and the person will generally not remember what they did during the microsleep. 

Here is the remainder of what this website says about microsleeps (as the paragraph is not easy to find on the page):

“They (Narcoleptics) fall asleep for a few seconds while performing a task but continue carrying it through to completion without any apparent interruption. During these episodes, people are usually engaged in habitual, essentially "second nature" activities such as taking notes in class, typing, or driving. They cannot recall their actions, and their performance is almost always impaired during a microsleep. Their handwriting may, for example, degenerate into an illegible scrawl, or they may store items in bizarre locations and then forget where they placed them. If an episode occurs while driving, patients may get lost or have an accident.”

You can find some more examples of automatic behavior during microsleeps for Narcoleptics in the Other Symptoms of Narcolepsy section on another website.  The wikipedia article is also useful, even though it is very short.  I would recommend that you take a look at both of these if you have time, especially the one with the examples, as I didn’t even realize that some of the things they mentioned are related to microsleep.

This mainly used to happen to me in school during long lectures or math class when I was already struggling to stay awake. 

Do you experience automatic behavior during microsleeps?  Have you found any tricks that help with this?

P.S. I am proud to say that I have now completed more than 30 posts on this site! :-)