Understanding the Phenomenon of Sleep Paralysis as a Byproduct of Intermittent Awareness of Signals from Cerebellum During Sleep

Amongst the most frightening types of nightmares are those involving ‘sleep paralysis.’ For millennia, man has sought to explain it through superstition, most notably the myth of the succubus. According to one ancient belief, sleep paralysis is caused by a nocturnal visit from a feminine demon called a succubus. In one case, this myth actually made its way into an official NIH publication: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6198602/

I propose a different hypothesis. The region of the brain known as the cerebellum is responsible for interpreting signals from the inner ear that give us our sense of balance. While dreaming, we have the ability to imagine we are moving about within an environment without actually moving. In our dreams, we imagine we are standing or sitting upright. We don’t generally imagine ourselves being in bed, although there are exceptions to this. As we fall asleep, we are generally lying on our side and our brain is aware of this fact. The cerebellum is responsible for tracking the orientation of our body with relation to up and down. We know that the cerebellum never completely shuts down during REM sleep as we may be shaken awake. However, the overall mind seems to be able to partially tune out signals from the cerebellum concerning corporeal orientation to enable us to move about in imagined dream spaces without being consciously aware that we are lying on our side. When this process isn’t quite as seamless as it should be, one consequence can be a nightmare in which we think we’ve awakened only to find ourselves still dreaming, only to need to wake up “for real” a second or third time. This, I submit is what happens when the cerebellum sends a signal concerning orientation of the body and the semi-conscious mind perceives it with the context of the body being stationary.