The Twilight Zone and Related Phenomena
The similarity of submergent (Su), emergent (Em) electroencephalograph (EEG) patterns to rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, and napping is of some significance. Without corollary information REM muscle tone and other physiological measures) computer analysis cannot differentiate these states. There are some significant clinical differences. Dream sleep (REM) is on the sleep side of wakefulness, and dreams have an ethereal, symbolic quality. Em, naps and Su states are obviously on the wake side of sleep. These have a time warp quality; most of us have after the alarm clock signals that it is time to get up say to ourselves “I’ll just sleep for five more minutes” and then looking at the clock to find that twenty-two minutes have elapsed. For work purposes believe the clock.
Clinically my initial awareness of this time distortion property was while observing Peter Tripp, a disc jockey who stayed “awake” for 205 hours in the Times Square News Booth in New York City. This was in the late 1950s and the event was to raise money for the March of Dimes. As the days went by, Peter would “nod off” and we (the participating psychiatrists) would arouse him to bring him back to full awareness. In many of these events he thought that more time had passed. While he stayed awake over eight days, these momentary lapses increased in frequency during his ordinary sleep time (4:00am to 12:00pm) which was his biological low. His broadcasts remained clear of these lapses until the 7th day or so (His broadcast time was 11:00pm to 2:00am as I recall).
The next event attracting my attention was in 1971. A Noble winning chemist was speaking at a psychiatric convention and said: “The answer (to the chemistry problem) came to me during twilight sleep one morning. I was half awake and half asleep and I saw the answer.” Please remember this was after four decades of research – you and I are not going to solve a problem in chemistry in twilight sleep! Alas.
