Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
From the brains behind Brains On, this is the moment of um. Answering those questions that make you go, I'm Rosie DuPont. Have you ever heard someone talking in their sleep? Maybe a sibling or a friend having a sleepover. They're totally out, but then they start saying things.
The weirdest part might be that they have no idea when they wake up that they were mumbling things about marshmallows in outer space or something wild like that. One of our listeners wondered what else we do in our sleep. Hi, my name is Libby and I am eight years old and I live in Nederland, Colorado. And my question is, do we sneeze when we are sleeping but we just don't notice? Bye. Almost certainly not.
Hi, I'm Michael Howell. I'm a neurologist who is interested in sleep disorders at the University of Minnesota. Sneezing is something that happens during the day which helps clear out any noxious particles that gets up into our nose. So usually, first of all, we're not really walking around. We don't have a lot of air circulating through our nose when we're sleeping. We do a little bit, but not a lot. In addition to that, when you fall asleep,
Your brain is less responsive to the environment. Certainly, we don't remember things, but if someone comes up and pinches you while you're asleep, you may very well not even notice it. Same thing with these noxious feelings that can cause us to sneeze, whether or not it's a little bit of pollen in our nose or whether or not it's a little bit of dust.
If those things circulate in through our nose when we're sleeping, it's very unlikely that our brain will trigger a sneeze because it's just not body. Our brain isn't receiving that noxious signal. If someone were to wake up sneezing, I would in fact even say that probably indicates that you're not sleeping because it tells us that your brain isn't getting deep enough asleep.
A couple of experiences that do frequently wake people up when they're sleeping, however, is coughing. So if they have a bad cold, if they have asthma. So to wake up coughing is not unusual. But that, again, that also indicates that there's something wrong, which is we need to take care of the coughing. We need to help you get a better night of sleep. Did you know that humans spend about one third of their lives sleeping?
And if we're always getting too little sleep, that can make us pretty cranky. Cats spend nearly two-thirds of their lives sleeping, though, so maybe we should just take a cue from them. Maybe it's time for a nap. If you liked this episode, take a second to subscribe to Moment of Um wherever you listen to podcasts. And if you just can't wait to hear more, check out the Brains On podcast.
where we talk about other weird stuff that bodies can do, like how tears work. If you have a moment of um question, we would love to help you answer it. Drop us a line by going to brainson.org slash contact. See you next time. Until then. ♪♪♪
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