Cataplexy is more of a loss of tone, vs. twitching. It's what your body does when you sleep and can't move. (this is hard to explain to people that never experienced it.... I used to think it was normal) If you've ever woken from a deep sleep and absolutely cannot move, or feel as if your blankets are crushing you but you can't make your mind move your hand to move them away.... that's the sort of paralysis. My daughter calls the short flickers "body hiccups" because it looks like her whole body is hiccuping. You can continue to walk, but there's that short little *whoopsie* where the knees buckle. It can also be many rapid-fire attacks.

The hypnogogic/sensory hallucinations happen when falling asleep or when waking up from a deep sleep... not while awake. Although sometimes it's hard to tell the difference with a narcoleptic. Amber once went 10 minutes through Spanish class, talking with her study partner while completely asleep (the doc called this an "automatic behavior"). Her note taking is a tell-tale... the hand keeps moving, the eyes are open, but the writing dribbles down to nonsense... and then gradually comes back to real words. We ended up getting her a voice activated recorder with speech recognition for all her classes so she could catch all of the notes.