Perhaps you have seen them, those who fall asleep on the subway and then, somehow, wake up exactly at their stop. Perhaps you are one of them. How is this possible? We spoke to two doctors, who offered their insights about it.
It is possible that your body gets used to waking up at a certain point each time during your commute, said Dr. Marc I. Leavey, a primary-care specialist in Maryland. That holds especially true if you commute at the same time every day. This suggests that if you were to get on at a different time, or if the journey were delayed, your internal clock might not wake you up at your stop. It is an interesting theory, but Dr. Ronald Chervin, director of Michigan Medicine's Sleep Disorders Centers, does not fully buy it. He is skeptical that circadian rhythms can also explain why you wake up after a brief nap.
You are also likely to wake up for your particular stop because of an oral cue, such as the conductor stating the name of the subway stop over the public-address system. Such cues alert your brain that you have arrived, explained Dr Leavey. According to a study published in the Public Library of Science, during sleep, our brain reacts differently when we hear our own name and other people's names, noted Dr Chervin. This suggests that your brain does not turn off during sleep, which makes it possible to pick up on the announcement of your stop.
Another reasonable possibility: You may wake up at each stop, check if it is yours, and go back to sleep, all without having remembered it, added Dr. Chervin. He sees this in cases where patients are suffering from sleep apnea. They may wake up as many as 200 times during a single night, without having remembered a single instance. That's because they fall right back asleep before their brain has time to process their experience into long-term memory. Similarly, you could be waking up every time you hear a new stop called. But you just don't remember such instances even after you fully come awake for your stop—leading you to believe that you have slept the whole way through and miraculously woken up at the right time.
