We usually assume dreaming belongs only to deep sleep. But it turns out we can have vivid dreams even while still awake.
A new study led by Nicolas Decat at the Paris Brain Institute (France) found that people experience bright, strange, event-like dreams just before falling asleep.
“Mental states that are traditionally associated with sleep can occur both during sleep and while awake,” Decat said.
These experiences are probably tied to specific patterns of brain activity, not simply to whether a person is asleep.
Decat aimed to test the legend that Thomas Edison used the sleep-onset phase to boost creativity. He supposedly held an object (for example, a metal ball or a bottle) that would fall as he nodded off. The clatter would wake him, and he’d write down any half-dream ideas that came up.
Researchers found four distinct mind-states between wakefulness and sleep
The team recruited 92 participants who were used to napping during the day. Scientists interrupted the volunteers’ sleep at different moments and asked them to describe what they had experienced during the previous 10 seconds.
One participant reported seeing ants “crawling over her body against a backdrop of crossword puzzles.” Another volunteer said they were mentally rehearsing their schedule for the next day, Decat said.
Throughout the study, researchers continuously recorded the participants’ brain activity using electroencephalography (EEG).
The analysis showed that sleepers didn’t just experience the two expected mental states—sleep and wakefulness. In a paper published in Cell Reports, the authors emphasized that there were four states:
- Fleeting: fragmentary images or memories flashing through the mind (for example, a sudden image of a relative).
- Attentive: a high degree of connection to the environment (for example, the person listening to street noises).
- Strange: unusual, possibly surreal images.
- Conscious: active, controlled thinking, such as planning tasks.
“This approach lets us capture rapid shifts in state from wakefulness to sleep and observe the mental experiences tied to those shifts,” Decat said.
The researchers said most people mistakenly assume vivid mental processes happen only in total darkness. Decat suggested that bias probably comes from memory distortion.
So the study challenges the traditional view that sleep and wakefulness have strict boundaries. The brain can be in a sleep-like state with strange visions even when EEG readings show the person isn’t technically asleep yet.
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