Animated scenes with closed eyes

For the past year or so I've noticed when I lay down often times I'll see animated scenes, mostly people. They are different than imagining something, and seem very visual and real. They aren't detailed with colors and fine detail, but they are unmistakable as a person or people doing activities or going through motions. All I see is my eyelid of course, lots of noise as usual, and these unmistakable shapes moving. It's like watching a video in that I can't predict what the motions might be and I'm surprised by it as I'm watching. They sometimes last a few minutes, a couple of minutes or a few seconds. When you imagine something, you are kinda leading the scene with your thoughts so you are never surprised. I am definitely not leading these scenes since I find myself surprised to see the next motion or action and that they are continuous, realistic movements. Does anyone else experience this and what might be the cause? I find it very interesting and look forward to laying down sometimes in hopes I'll see some action or movement.

I get this often when I am sleep deprived. Is that the case?

Hey, nice to hear you are able to see such things. Sometimes, not very often, but sometimes I can fully aware see landscapes like in a fly by. But if I focus too much on it, I lose it. These are not dreams, because I hear everything else around me, and most of my dreams are more striking.
The landscapes I see are looking real. I love the way our brain works!

this happens to me when i am extremely exhausted or spent the weekend in my "weekend warrior #winning" mode. the people/objects are outlined in red

It could be this phenomenon known to affect 33% of the population:

A special form of pre-sleep imagery, called HYPNAGOGIC IMAGERY, is experienced by about 33% of people. To see if you can experience those, simply try to be aware of what you see as you fall to sleep.
[...]
Hypnagogic images, according to some, are the result of the visual system "attempting to make sense" of the visual input still available to the eyes when the mind is drifting toward sleep. Even in very low ambient light levels, light penetrates the eyelids, making the patterns of blood flow through them visible. This is the basis for an "interpretation" by the visual system. The visual system may attempt to "force" the input to correspond to, say, a geometrical pattern, or the semblance of some object. Dream images (another type of hallucinogenic image) or spontaneous memory images (another type of mental image) may intrude into such images. The stages, or types of imagery, associated with sleep and dreaming share an important common characteristic that figures in their definition: they are autonomous.

Source.


It is many times connected to what you may have read about in these forums, Lucid Dreaming.

Also these two videos may have information that you might find interesting:

Originally posted by Griffo
I get this often when I am sleep deprived. Is that the case?

edit on 24/3/2011 by Griffo because: (no reason given)

Not really. I get to bed when I'm tired and sleep in if I want, so I get my 8 hours. This is when I lay down before sleep. I'm just thinking about some things that i need to get done or that happened during the day and these moving images kinda pop into my vision, on my eyelids i suppose you could say, while my eyes are closed

Originally posted by InTrueFiction
It could be this phenomenon known to affect 33% of the population:

A special form of pre-sleep imagery, called HYPNAGOGIC IMAGERY, is experienced by about 33% of people. To see if you can experience those, simply try to be aware of what you see as you fall to sleep.

I think this hypnagogic state may explain it. Very interesting indeed. I also often times see waves of a dark or lightness flowing from one side of my vision to the other, continuously and in even increments, like every 2 to 4 seconds. This happens when I'm fully relaxed. Last night I experienced an effect that was similar but the motion wasn't from one side to the other, it was EXACTLY like a radar. It went in a circle coming out from the center and looked like a radar. It was so clear, and I just watched it until it went away. I find these things pretty fascinating because although I've seen things in the past like geometric patterns that everyone sees, I haven't seen things like this until the past few years.