http://mindhacks.com/2009/10/28/an-illusory-interlude/ Neuroscience and psychology news and views. Sun, 19 May 2013 06:21:58 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.com/ http://mindhacks.com/2009/10/28/an-illusory-interlude/#comment-5244 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:41:25 +0000 http://mindhacksblog.wordpress.com/2009/10/28/an-illusory-interlude/#comment-5244 When I was a kid — long before I was diagnosed with narcolepsy — I *was* the kid from Sixth Sense. I would wake up in the night, and be surrounded by “ghosts”. As I was brought up in a strongly atheistic household, I kept this very firmly to myself, but for many years was convinced that I was psychic. The diagnosis, description of hypnagogic hallucination, and the immediate exxplanation that this provided me for the phenomena I was experiencing launched me back into materialism with a vengeance, and made me very relieved I had told no-one of my assumed psychic powers.
In the adult world, one has to stay very alert for detachment from reality. For me short hallucinatory episodes (or short proper sleep episodes) are actually most problematic at their most prosaic — within conversations, lectures, or whilst reading — in which nothing eventful happens but my dreamed experience simply follows on, but of course diverges from, the actual informative content of the interaction, leading me to either say wholly inapposite remarks, or believe I have been informed of a fact which my brain simply made up.

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