I'm not clear on how you are defining the hypnagogic state.
Some years ago I read something that caused me to associate it with an experience I had. I had driven very late into the night...or early into the morning, and when I arrived, exhausted, at my destination and tried to crash, I had a bit of trouble falling asleep, as I had striven to stay awake for a while! When I did, I had images of the road and the white lines in my view. The images had a particular character or sense to them that I cannot define...(but we can all tell the difference between a watercolor or an oil painting, and if oil is waking, then maybe this is watercolor), but what I read lead me to label that dram road a hypnagogic dream image.
I have had other vivid experiences of body asleep mind somewhere else that have a different quality to them, yet if you define hypnagogic as that in-between state, they might be labeled as hypnagogic images. But they were different. Maybe they were acrylics.
So I'm getting a definition that doesn't make sense to me.
I checked on the web and came across an article that..hmm can I link to it so I can quote from it and not Plagarize
!
http://209.85.173.132/search?q=cache:uwzWUzQ1rmUJ:mindfull.spc.org/vaughan/Vaugh...so this writer says in one place this:
Quote:Try this yourself on public transport. Because of the low background noiseand occasional external prompting, if you manage to fall asleep, dozing onbuses and trains can often lead to striking hypnagogic states. In spite of this,this is not always the most practical technique, as you can sometimes end uphaving to explore more than your own consciousness if you miss your stop.
That was interesting to me because I have a great ability to fall asleep on the subway after a full day's work and sometimes I do experience this. This happens particularly if I am reading and then doze off sitting up. I think I read something else but when I wake up the words I just read aren't there. (in years of doing this, I think I only missed a stop once, and that was when I was on the wrong train and went through the stop where I have to change trains).
Vaughan Bell also says:
Quote:An ingenious study published in Science did manage to investigate the roleof some of the deeper brain structures in hypnagogia [3], specifically themedial temporal lobes, which are particularly linked to memory function.The researchers asked five patients who had suffered medial temporal lobedamage to play several hours of Tetris. Damage to this area of the brainoften causes amnesia, and the patients in this study had little consciousmemory for more than a few minutes at a time. On one evening, some hoursafter their last game, the players were woken up just as they started to dozeand were asked for their experiences. Although they had no conscious memoryof playing the game, all of the patients mentioned images of falling,rotating Tetris blocks. This has given us some strong evidence that the hypnagogicstate may be due (at least in part) to unconscious memories appearingas unusual hypnagogic experiences.
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318 | Chapter 9, RememberingIn Real LifeMany authors and artists have been fascinated by this state and have tried toextend or use it to explore ideas or gain inspiration. To name a couple, RobertLouis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and manyof Paul Klee’s paintings were reportedly inspired by hypnagogic experiences.See Also1. Tanaka, H., Hayashi, M., & Hori, T. (1997). Topographicalcharacteristics and principal component structure of the hypnagogicEEG. Sleep, 20(7), 523–534.2. Wackermann, J., Putz, P., Buchi, S., Strauch, I., & Lehmann, D.(2002). Brain electrical activity and subjective experience duringaltered states of consciousness: ganzfeld and hypnagogic states.International Journal of Psychophysiology, 46(2), 123–146.3. Stickgold, R., Malia, A., Maguire, D., Roddenberry, D., & O’Connor,M. (2000). Replaying the game: Hypnagogic images in normals and amnesics. Science, 290(5490), 350–353.4. Although this is quite an old paper now, it is still one of the best reviews of the history, phenomena, and techniques associated with the hypnagogic state. Schacter, D. L. (1976). The hypnagogic state:A critical review of the literature. Psychological Bulletin, 83(3), 452–481.—Vaughan Bell
This is more like my experience after driving. The stuff about the Tetris blocks.
(Hmm the page 5 stuff doesn't show on the page on my computer, but it copied and pasted. So I left it there.)