New study explains why some insomniacs sleep without realizing it. Labeled as “sleep misperception”, there is a phenomenon where people with insomnia are clearly asleep but do not experience it, reporting the next morning that they did not sleep at all. To find out more, Professor Daniel Kay of Brigham Young University and his team studied 32 people with insomnia and 30 people without the condition – their sleep patterns, brain wave, and activity patterns during sleep, and participants’ own reports of their sleep experience the next morning. Those with insomnia who reported not being asleep when the polysomnography (technology to track sleep) reported them to be so were confirmed to be experiencing conscious-level activity in their brain during non-REM stages. This suggests that those who suffer from this condition are not receiving the inhibitory neurons that your brain sends out gradually until you eventually lose consciousness and go to sleep. This, in turn, has great implications for the treatment of insomnia, involving a new goal of helping those people experience greater inhibitory activity, and Professor Kay recommends that these people engage in lengthy mindful meditation before sleeping in the meantime.