Sleep talking, or somniloquy, is the act of speaking during sleep; a type of ‘parasomnia’ and abnormal behaviour that takes place during sleep, very common and not usually considered a medical problem. Whereas sleepwalking, or somnambulism’, is when you physically get up and do other activities whilst asleep, possibly explaining the folklore of sleepwalkers looking like vampires – dead, but in some kind of trance or dream-state. In fact, a writer and researcher from the 19th century, called Cyprien Robert, wrote about these “living men” being “mastered by a kind of somnambulism (sleepwalking), who seized by a thirst for blood go forth at night from their shepherd’s huts and scour the country biting and tearing all that they meet, both man and beast”. Similarly, R.E.L Masters, a mythology scholar, defines the Slavic voukodlake of Eastern Europe as “somnambules who ravish young girls and drink their hot nourishing blood while in a trance, thus making them exceedingly dangerous”. So, either way, it wasn’t great to be known as a sleepwalker a few centuries ago. But like with most superstitious folklore tales, it has now been broken up into mythical facts which we gullibly believe. A popular sleepwalking myth, for example, states that waking up a sleepwalker is very dangerous, as they can either have a heart attack and die or they may simply go crazy due to the situation. Neither is true. Naturally the sleepwalker will feel disoriented when/if woken up, as they are in a different place to where they fell asleep; but rest assured, they won’t go mad or have a heart attack.
Scientifically speaking, sleepwalking occurs during the first third of our sleep cycle – NREM (non-REM cycle of your sleep), the deepest part of our sleep cycle, as our body ‘repairs’ itself and releases hormones. Hormones such as melatonin (released by the pineal gland) controls our sleep patterns, explaining why the increase at night-time, causing us to feel sleepy. Instead, whilst you’re sleeping, your pituitary gland releases growth hormones which ultimately helps our body grow and repair itself. All in all, the main reasons for sleepwalking are induced by either: lack of sleep or fatigue, irregular sleep patterns, illness or fever, some medicines and/or stress. However, one could nevertheless be a sleepwalker without these issues, potentially making the nights even more entertaining than the days (more so for the spectators who see the sleepwalkers).
Scientists believe sleepwalking occurs when two areas of the brain remain awake, while the areas that would otherwise ease their primitive impulses, sleep (notably the frontal cortex for rationality and the hippocampus for memory). The two parts of the brain which remain awake are the limbic region, which deals with raw emotions, and the cortex, which manages complex motor activity. During sleep, we can have an activation of the motor system, meaning that although you are sleeping and not moving, the motor cortex can be in a “wake-like state”, ready to go-go-go. Perhaps this is a modern-day manifestation of an ancient, built-in mechanism that helped keep our sleeping ancestors alive. As humans evolved it may have been a critical fail-safe system for us to sleep with one eye open, as most situations were typically dangerous and potentially life-threatening, thus, we had to be ready to fight (should a threat present itself). Maybe this is still the case today? For those of us who live in big, over-crowded and bustling cities, we may have developed a constant sense of ‘flight and fight’ response in our subconscious. But what if the actions you played out whilst sleepwalking created unfathomable and irreparable damage to your life? Something as unthinkable as murder.
Homicidal sleepwalking, although sometimes an excuse for murder, is the act of killing someone during an episode of sleepwalking. An example of such a case would be the one of Scott Falater, who murdered his wife, Yamila, by stabbing her a dozen times and dragged her to the backyard to shove her body into their pool. He was convicted of first-degree murder in 2000 and sentenced to life in prison, but to this day he still says that he doesn’t remember committing the act. His defence’s argument has always been that he killed his wife while in his sleep (i.e., Sleepwalking), which brought out sensational headlines naming him the “sleepwalking killer”. Although sleepwalking murders are extreme and rare cases, if we understand why sleepwalkers sometimes kill, we can also come to understand everyday parasomnias, such as; sleepwalking and sleep eating which still have many questions left unanswered.
So, if you are a sleepwalker, don’t worry because most of the population are too. If anything, you might be living your best life during your sleepwalking adventures, roaming the kitchen and scaring the dog, as well as the unlucky family members who whiteness your hazy eyed and vampire like stance. Or perhaps sleepwalkers are more in tune with another world, another energy which us mere non-sleepwalkers cannot see or feel. All in all, sleepwalking is a mysterious act which we still do not know much about.
Dolphinmind 