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You can dream while you're awake. The boundary between wakefulness and sleep is a lot blurrier than you'd think
https://medicalxpress.com/news/2026-07-youre-boundary-lot-blurrier-youd.htmlNicolas Decat, Delphine Oudiette, The Conversation
This describes my personal experiences with that nodding off time so well. I also have lucid dreams frequently.
Tonight, as you close your eyes in bed, something strange will happen to you: Your mind will drift from an ordinary thought to a dream, but it will be impossible to say exactly when it happened. We tend to imagine that the boundary between being asleep and awake is clear: When we are awake, we think; when we are asleep, we dream. Yet, in our study, published in Cell Reports, we show that this boundary is more porous than you think. You can dream before falling asleep and plan your day ahead after drifting off.
From thought to dream and everything in between
Think about what it means to be awake. Right now, as you read these lines, sounds reach you, light falls on you and fabric touches your skin. You are anchored in the world. Sleeping is somewhat the opposite. You are still, cut off from the outside world and inhabited by experiences constructed from within: dreams.
Between the two, there is a lapse of time. We do not switch from one state to the other, like flipping a light switch. It is a gradual transition in which brain activity slows down, muscles relax and breathing deepens. And the mind does not cease to function; it takes on other forms by producing thoughts related to the day or the day ahead, fleeting images, a few scraps of music and fragments of dreams. Researchers call this half-awake, half-asleep state of consciousness "hypnagogia."
The problem is that these experiences are fleeting and ever-changing, hard to report and even harder to classify. How do we move from "What am I going to eat tomorrow?" to "I am sitting on a train moving underwater"? Until now, researchers have tried to sort them into categories based on what they are ("This one seems bizarre, it must be a dream" ) or on when they occur ("I exclude anything that happens during wakefulness" ). The result: We knew that a multitude of experiences pass through the mind during the sleep onset period, but without being sure which ones, nor when or how the brain produces them. That is exactly what we set out to understand.
. . .
From thought to dream and everything in between
Think about what it means to be awake. Right now, as you read these lines, sounds reach you, light falls on you and fabric touches your skin. You are anchored in the world. Sleeping is somewhat the opposite. You are still, cut off from the outside world and inhabited by experiences constructed from within: dreams.
Between the two, there is a lapse of time. We do not switch from one state to the other, like flipping a light switch. It is a gradual transition in which brain activity slows down, muscles relax and breathing deepens. And the mind does not cease to function; it takes on other forms by producing thoughts related to the day or the day ahead, fleeting images, a few scraps of music and fragments of dreams. Researchers call this half-awake, half-asleep state of consciousness "hypnagogia."
The problem is that these experiences are fleeting and ever-changing, hard to report and even harder to classify. How do we move from "What am I going to eat tomorrow?" to "I am sitting on a train moving underwater"? Until now, researchers have tried to sort them into categories based on what they are ("This one seems bizarre, it must be a dream" ) or on when they occur ("I exclude anything that happens during wakefulness" ). The result: We knew that a multitude of experiences pass through the mind during the sleep onset period, but without being sure which ones, nor when or how the brain produces them. That is exactly what we set out to understand.
. . .
There is a questionnaire at the end of this article if you're interested in participating. I noticed that it does have tracking information based on this MedicalXpres article.