Hack your brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls and a radio

Re:Hack your brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls ... by yan on Monday January 12, 2009 @01:53PM (#430903)

In "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman", Feynman went over a few experiments he did to notice what happens when you're falling asleep when he was an undergrad. He concluded that your thoughts become more and more random and flooded as you get closer to actual sleep, until your brain gets overwhelmed and passes out.

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Re:Hack your brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls ... by ph0rque on Monday January 12, 2009 @04:40PM (#431192)

>He concluded that your thoughts become more and more random and flooded as you get closer to actual sleep, until your brain gets overwhelmed and passes out.

At one point when I had trouble falling asleep in less than 1/2 an hour, I used the reverse to fall asleep quicker: I'd guide myself into thinking outlandish things, then my brain would naturally progress in this fashion until I fell asleep.

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Re:Hack your brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls ... by Shamiq on Tuesday January 13, 2009 @02:15AM (#431754)

This has worked for me in the past. Though I can never repeat it reliably. Given enough stress for the following day, my thoughts will gravitate back to what needs to get done.

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Re:Hack your brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls ... by DaniFong on Monday January 12, 2009 @02:01PM (#430916)

It feels the same way when I'm waking up. Whatever I'm doing in the dream seems incomprehensibly crucial, then I realize it doesn't make sense, and then that I'm dreaming, and then that I'm awake.

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Re:Hack your brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls ... by pmjordan on Monday January 12, 2009 @02:31PM (#430971)

I feel like I'm missing out on something here.

The most I've hallucinated while falling asleep is occasional swirly patterns. No sounds, ever. Maybe because I've had a tinnitus for as long as I can remember? (constant ~20kHz)

Likewise, nothing when waking up. Once every couple of months or so I "know" that I've been dreaming and at best can remember a person or object from the dream. After a few seconds even that is irretrievably gone.

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Re:Hack your brain: How to hallucinate with ping-pong balls ... by silentbicycle on Monday January 12, 2009 @03:09PM (#431041)

You may not remember it.

The technical term for this sort of thing is hypnagogia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnagogia); if you want to dig deeper, that's where to look. It's sort the sensory parallel to when you're just starting to fall asleep and suddenly your leg kicks and wakes you up. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypnic_jerk)

I've been on the edge of sleep and thought the gurgling noises from my radiator were mumbled speech outside my window.

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