TIL about exploding head syndrome, which causes patients to hear a loud, frightening noise when falling asleep or waking up. Up to 10% of people may have it, but cases often go undiagnosed
TIL about exploding head syndrome, which causes patients to hear a loud, frightening noise when falling asleep or waking up. Up to 10% of people may have it, but cases often go undiagnosed
cross-posted from: https://lemmit.online/post/2659121
It'll be awkward when they discover a new syndrome where your head explodes and the name's already taken.
They could name it Kennedy syndrome or something like that.
Hello, fellow "no shooter" conspiracy theorist!
Good thing cranial rapid pressurization change syndrome is still available…
Rapid unplanned cranial disassembly
Not catchy enough! Though you can shorten it to "crap syndrome".
Sometimes sound, sometimes an impact. Either way it’s pretty disruptive. I thought this was very common.
Yes, I get the sound version but it's more likely for me to just be walking in a dream, fall flat on my face, and wake up. But it's more jarring than it should be.
Apparently it's more common in people with sleep paralysis, which I have.
The falling thing is a hypnic jerk. I get both too though the nose one tends to be rare and more often when I’m sick.
i just realized i have this. not sounds but "impacts".
Yes, I get the sound version but it's more likely for me to just be walking in a dream, fall flat on my face, and wake up. But it's more jarring than it should be.
Apparently it's more common in people with sleep paralysis, which I have.
Hmmm, never really thought about this, but I have this happen every now and then. From what I remember it sounds like a sudden snap or click, but I don't have concrete memory of the sound. Also with a bright flash of light. Just a sudden sensory spike. I don't have good memories of it, because it usually happens just when I really start falling asleep and at that point memory usually isn't working well. It's also often accompanied with my muscles suddenly activating, basically jolting me awake. Heart rate spikes as well, but I cannot really remember any instance where it was more than a small nuisance. I always assumed that it was just a bit of a race condition in the transition to the deeper sleep state
Maybe time to write an issue to the development team for the brain OS :p
Pull request closed: could not replicate
This has happened to me twice very recently and never had it before, scary stuff
Wow! Now I have a cool name to this phenomenon. Doesn't happen every night and there are also times I can ignore it because it's typically not scary, just disruptive. I also see the flashes of light and that can be scary sometimes. I'll think somebody tried to come in while I'm sleeping or that a nuclear bomb just went off. Or that a cosmic ray hit my eyeball.
Now, is there a phenomenon about seeing random faces in my head while falling asleep as well?
I used to have all this as a chronic weed user, if you're the same maybe try stopping and see if they go away. The only one I still have is the flashing lights, but it's rarer.
Haha that's what I couldn't ever narrow down (I guess cause I don't quit long enough usually)
Hypnagogic hallucinations
I've had this! Idk why they'd call it the exploding head syndrome, but it sounded like a door shutting really loudly
I hear door slams now and then too
Not for me, oh dear. It’s a legit BOOOOOM
I've had the door sound too a few times
Mine goes ShhhhshhiINNKK!!! Starts kind of static like and within the same second makes a sound like if you flicked a really thin glass really hard, but with a metallic finish. I also see a flash of purple/green/silver color on my eyelids when it happens.
Really difficult to describe.
When I was deployed in Afghanistan, everyone I knew had the same reoccurring dream- some other dream is happening, and then out of nowhere, you hear a gunshot/explosion, and wake in a cold sweat, absolutely certain that you just got shot or blown up. And the certainty persists for about five seconds after you wake, as you shakily pat yourself down for blood. Good times.
And the certainty persists for about five seconds after you wake, as you shakily pat yourself down for blood.
Unless you also happen to get sleep paralysis at the same time! Happened to a friend who fortunately was in a tent full of very understanding people when he woke us up screaming.
Fantastic combination
This made me double check, but it's still just that I have loud children.
I don’t know if this qualifies, but I go on call for my job and get woken up sometimes. I use a really annoying alert tone to make sure I wake up. Unfortunately, some times when I’m not on call I hallucinate hearing that tone as I’m dozing off or in a dead sleep and it makes me shoot straight up in bed.
I used to have this during my school days lol
I have ADHD and am a night owl, so that kind of time management was always super stressful for me, to the point that I would set up a dozen or so alarms so I would wake up in the morning. After some time it was so ingrained that I sometimes heard the alarm sound randomly when sleeping, always causing me to be wide awake in the middle of the night with racing pulse.
I used to have that when I was a teenager. About one out every ten times I was falling asleep just at the moment I drifted off I'd feel this crazy big pop that went from deep behind my right eye to the top right part of my skull. Sometimes it was more like a noise, sometimes it was more like a physical impact, like somebody bounced a golf ball off of my skull. It was really annoying. It started to happen less and less as I got older though. It pretty much went away completely by the time I was in my late 20s.
Always felt like an increasing rush of wind to me. Like falling faster and faster.
I get that as well! When it’s not a horrifyingly loud boom, it’s like an increasingly loud wind sound. When I get that one, it’s accompanied by my body feeling like I’m in a wind vortex being whipped around every direction. Makes me scared to go back to sleep.
I get this from time to time when falling asleep. It's really annoying when it happens. Like I'll be dozing off and then there will be this loud-ass noise.
How would you describe the sound?
I've experienced this, or at least something that very closely fits its description, a couple times in the past, and it varies on a case-by-case basis. One time it was almost like the sound of glass breaking, I think one time might've been closer to a door slamming. Weird shit.
And, same deal as the other fella, hard to remember the specifics 'cause you're sorta half-asleep when it happens.
For me it is a popping sound, a bit like the sound of popping your ears during an altitude change, but way, way louder. It would be impossible to mistake for a noise caused by something IRL, it sounds like that blood rushing into your ears sound for me.
I hear a loud bang as if from another room. Like a trash can falling over, or a someone dropping a bag with about 10lbs on a hardwood floor, or a pushing a wooden chair into a dining table too hard. It's enough to think "what just fell?!".
It does not sound like a door closing, or stomping, or something fragile moving or falling.
I startle awake, realize I'm the only one awake, and that there aren't anymore sounds so it must have been my brain and I pass out fully.
It's pretty strange and I think it's funny how I never really thought about it until now.
Like most people, it changes. For me it is like someone took the volume knob on the world and maxed it out for half a second. Just a blip of every sound in the room suddenly being set to 11. Sometimes it is like someone yelling in my ear, but just a grunt or a scream like they fell over.
I have this happen sometimes. Usually its loud but mundane stuff like doors closing, a familiar voice saying something vaugly important, something slamming or dropping. It can variy wildly but usually its the most boring crap.
Usually I go back to sleep with no issues but sometimes it startles you and gets the adrenaline going. I usually rule it out as half dreaming but sometimes you got to check to name sure no one broke in.
The absolute worse is the cat throwing up, I have to go check that one since sometimes its real.
Mine sounds like a big commotion, like a bunch of metal sculptures falling off a table. Luckily it doesn't happen often.
Me.
It's an explosion in my head.
Like this : imagine a sound. For example, a cat meow. Meow meow. You doing that? Are you "hearing" that meow in your "mental sound space"?
Now imagine the sound is 500x louder. And it isn't a meow, its an explosion.
It sounds like the blast of compressed air when you disconnect a compressor fitting.
That's what it's like.
It happens in half-sleep.
I've had big blasts that make me go "woah" a couple times a month since forever. I had a really big blast that made me go "holy shit!" just a couple days ago.
I heard something a few days ago that sounded 100% like someone crashing a car through my apartment. I jumped up and looked around, and nothing was happening. Sometimes it just sounds like a gunshot next to my ear, but usually it sounds like an industrial crash. Screeching metal exploding.
Wouldn't you develop PTSD from this kind of thing
Apparently not
Wait, is this my "nightmare sound"? When I have nightmares (fairly rarely, but I've gone through times when they were more common) there's a sound that goes with them, and builds in intensity as the fear comes to a crescendo. It's like a high-pitched whine that starts as a hum (like tinnitus) and slowly grows to ear-splitting intensity, except it's more like head-splitting because it feels like the origin is in the center of my head. And I say "feels" intentionally because it's not just a sound, it feels like my consciousness is vibrating apart.
Often the actual content of my nightmares is mostly abstract (like worrying about why the room is dark, or feeling followed but not knowing by what) and the terror is completely disproportionate to the events, but directly proportional to the intensity of the sound.
Uh, for me it's firmly inside the dream though, I wouldn't classify it as a hallucination. When I was taking antidepressants I used to have hallucinations wake me up—like waking up because I heard my mom talking, when she was in a different state—but that felt different. That was like hearing someone in the room with you and having it pull you out of whatever dream you were having. The "nightmare sound" is inside the nightmare, it isn't what wakes me up.
Whoa this is so interesting!
I've been having them on and off for as long as I can remember. I seem to notice I suffer them more often when sleep deprived and also when playing long hours of videogames (or both).
For me, it sounds exactly like a wooden screen door slamming shot.
The spring-loaded kind or someone/thing forcibly closing it?
Interesting Q lesbian_seagull. I never got the sense that anyone else was involved, but the sound is definitely slamming shut with a loud thwack. And I suppose the first couple times I thought it was real, but I don’t have screen doors.
Yes. Me too.
I would describe it as the sound of a big quick blast of compressed air. Like when you disconnect a compressor fitting.
Which is pretty similar.
Short loud white noise.
A flash of white light in sound form?
To me, it sounds like someone screaming into my ear.
I have that. I call it "shitty neighbour syndrome".
I absolutely hate my upstairs neighbors. Even worse when they have a party up until 4 am. The other day though my smoke alarm threw me out of the bed by violently blaring three times. Never had a false alarm before but always thought it would be if I maybe burn something in the kitchen by accident, not when there's absolutely nothing going on while I sleep.
Lol
For why this is happening to me, I've narrowed this down to the following: snoring (I start snoring as soon as my eyes close), dreams (I have "imaginative" dreams, a lot of nightmares) and the last reason being lack of sleep to which I think I've actually heard the explosion but it was a dream.
I get this sometimes. Kinda weird, but ultimately not a huge deal.
I get it too but only if I'm trying to fall asleep on my back. 3 weeks ago I got a really strong one, I could still feel the shock in my brain for a minute after.
This happened to me for about a week. I've never had it since.
Hypnic jerk with synesthesia?
There's possibly some relation there, but I have hypnic jerks almost every night and EHS every now and then and as far as I'm aware I do not have synesthesia.
Given the number of curious sensory experiences people sometimes have during wake-sleep transition, I’d be curious what aspects overlap in measurable ways, especially excitatory responses normally modulated by the reticular formation. I used to have hypnic jerks constantly, really bothersome. Ultimately exercise seemed to work best. The rate of occurrence fell over the course of a year (racetams seemed to hasten progress but I think exercise alone would have worked on a similar timeline) and now I rarely have them at all, but I’m still curious about the mechanism behind it. It just hasn’t gotten tons of research attention so far.
Wowfuck! I've been thinking about an approaching stroke for almost 40 years and it's time to say goodbye. Thank you, that's good news.
Makes me wonder if the sound when falling asleep is similar to an old TV being turned off. 🤔
Its not, its like an explosion
I had no idea this was a known phenomenon. I had experienced this for a while some years ago. I tried to tell my doctor about explosions in my head while falling asleep, but she had no idea what it could be after ruling out seizures. Mine were like a really loud explosion with a bright flash of light. It was obvious it all took place in my head, but it always came with this sense that I had been hurt even though there was no physical pain after.
Interesting to know there's a name for this. Thanks for sharing!
Probably otological
It's sometimes accompanied by a perceived flash of light though.
Pressure can do that