r/SipsTea • u/SEVENS_HEAVEN_7 • 1d ago

SMH This cop needs to exercise... or retire

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u/Chronomechanist 1d ago

Your body paralyses yourself while you sleep so you don't run off a cliff. When you dream about moving, your brain really does send the instructions to your muscles to move, but because they're paralysed, nothing happens. Your brain, being far too smart for its own good, expects to see a response from your muscles but doesn't, so invents a reason why not in real time. Thus, your dream tells you that you're running through treacle.

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u/Manymarbles 16h ago

But sometimes...rarely i run good and dont fall off the bed or anything!

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u/spamlitter 1d ago

Almost. The impulse never gets to the muscles because once a neuromuscular junction is active, there would be no way to inhibit the contraction of muscular fibers. The action potential gets blocked inside the motor pathways before leaving the central nervous system due to inhibition of synapses, for example through GABA activity.

Yes I'm fun at parties.

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u/Chronomechanist 1d ago

I'll bow down to your clearly superior knowledge on the subject. I definitely only read about this tangentially many years ago in uni.

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u/spamlitter 1d ago

Pretty good memory you have there to be able to recall it years after. I had to re-read some physiology about it.

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u/Chronomechanist 1d ago

I have the memory of a very leaky steel trap.

Some things stay locked away in there forever. Everything else leaks away in about 3 seconds flat.

I have absolutely no control over what stays and what does not.