One in five people have experienced this frightening state – and the Harvard neuroscientist Baland Jalal has dedicated his career to studying it. Could it be a portal to a deeper understanding of the mind?
The Harvard neuroscientist Baland Jalal is considering the unfathomable depths of the human brain. “It can contemplate itself, and vast galaxies, spirits, souls, poetry, Einstein. Yet you hold it in your hand and it seems so trivial.” Jalal’s passion – the subject that drove him to become a scientist – is sleep paralysis, a brain glitch that can fill its host with terror so palpable that it can cause lasting trauma. “What you get very close to in sleep paralysis,” he says, “is that subjective world of the mind. It’s very hard to put into words.”
He should know – he’s spent 271 pages trying to do so. His new book, The Phantom Mind, argues that by exploring the borderlands of sleep, where sleep paralysis occurs, we can delve deeper into how all aspects of our minds work. He may wear a lab coat and examine brain regions and neurochemicals, but studying the mechanics, he says, doesn’t damp down the mysteries of consciousness. “For me, actually, I’ve become more spiritual and interested in the world of mystery and, I want to say supernatural, but dimensions that are intangible, by studying something like sleep paralysis.”