Dr. Matt Walker

And that's where you can have these jerks.

That's our current best theory.

During REM sleep, and I'll explain what happens in the brain, but what you're talking about is something that is even more unique about REM sleep.

As we go into REM sleep, your brain paralyzes your body.

So you are physically locked into the incarceration of your body.

Why would your brain do this?

And it's what we call muscle atonia.

Now, I was telling you that we measure your electrical brain activity and we measure your eye movement activity, but we also measure your muscle activity.

Why do we do that?

Well, as you're going into non-REM sleep, that muscle tone decreases, but there's still some muscle tone there.

But as you go into REM sleep, in fact, just a few seconds before you enter REM sleep, I already know you're going into REM sleep because bang, you become completely absent of muscle tone.

And if I were to pick you up, I mean, I'm probably not gonna be able to pick you up out of your bed based on certain images I've seen on social media.

I'm going to, if I lift you up, you'd just be like a rag doll.

You would have no muscle tone whatsoever.

It's almost like those toys where it's like a donkey that sits up and it's got a button underneath and you press the button, whoosh, and it just falls down.

I used to have those as a kid too.

Like the simple things that you and I had as children that would fascinate us.

So this muscle, as we call muscle atonia, and I think in sort of medicine, usually with an A before it means the absence of something.

So sort of if you have arrhythmia, absence of normal arrhythmia.

Aphasia.