Sign 3: Incomprehensible Mumbles
There’s a kind of mystique surrounding those soft, barely discernible murmurs that escape the lips of a sleeper. Incomprehensible mumbles, often the soundtrack of dreams, hint at the intricate ballet of neurons and emotions playing out beneath the tranquil surface of sleep. These mumbles are like the faint brush strokes on a canvas, filling in the spaces between the more vivid splashes of color.
Many have often likened this phenomenon to listening to a far-off radio station, where the signals occasionally break, leaving behind just a trace of sound. The underlying causes are still a topic of extensive research. While we know that the REM stage can be quite a vocal affair, these soft murmurs seem to hover on the fringes of both REM and non-REM stages, making them even more enigmatic.
From a psychological perspective, these mumbles might be the mind’s way of processing and filtering information. Imagine the brain as a vast library, continually receiving new books. Every night, the librarian (our subconscious) sifts through these, deciding which to keep, which to discard, and where to place each one. The murmurs could be snippets of this internal dialogue, a whispering commentary on the day’s events or emotions.
Interestingly, while most symptoms of somniloquy can be a solo affair, mumbles often act as triggers for co-sleepers or partners. They might lean in, straining to catch a word or a phrase, sometimes even responding in hopes of steering the conversation. However, the mumbler remains ensconced in their world, their utterances free from the confines of lucidity and logic.
Rounding off this symptom, the beauty of incomprehensible mumbles lies in their sheer unpredictability and the poetic ambiguity they offer. They serve as gentle reminders of the vast universe that exists within our minds, where words need not always have clarity to convey emotion and essence. (3)
