BrainStuff Classics: How Does Sleepwalking Work?

Researchers don't entirely understand why we humans sometimes walk around (or doing any number of other things) in our sleep, but there are a few myths that they can dispell. Learn more about sleepwalking, aka somnambulism, in this classic episode of BrainStuff.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain Stuff,
I'm more in vocal Bomb and I've got another classic
episode for you today from our former host, Christian Sager.
This one is about the phenomenon of sleepwalking. I myself
used to sleepwalk sometimes when I was a kid, but
I grew out of it, and as it turns out,
that's not all that uncommon. Here's Christian. Hi, I'm Christian Sager,

(00:29):
and this is brain Stuff. Have you ever seen someone sleepwalking?
It's creepy, right. They're just sort of shambling around like
a zombie, and not one of those super fast World
War Z type zombies, but more of the slow, clumsy,
walking dead type. They might even have glassy eyes or
a bland, blank expression, and when they wake up they

(00:49):
won't remember what happened. So what the heck is going
on with sleepwalking? How does it work, who does it affect?
And what are the common misconceptions about it? Well, first,
let's define sleep walking. If you want to get fancy,
you can call it somnambulism. It's a type of parasomnia
or abnormal disruptive behavior that occurs during sleep. This category

(01:12):
also includes stuff like bedwedding, and teeth grinding. Sleepwalkers may
also act out a number of activities during this process.
These could be simple things like eating to more complex
processes like driving a car, yeah driving. For centuries, people
have been trying to figure out what's going on with sleepwalking,

(01:32):
and while scientists haven't fully cracked the case, we do
know more and more about this phenomenon and it's helping
us bust some myths. One, sleepwalkers probably aren't acting out
their dreams. We know this because most sleepwalking occurs during
the first third of the night, when your body is
in n rem or non rem sleep. This is the

(01:56):
deepest part of your sleep cycle. It's a time when
your body repairs it self and releases hormones. You're not
dreaming while this goes on, and because your brain will
resist awakening in this state, it may be difficult to
snap a sleepwalker out of it. But don't be afraid
to try, because here's another fact. You can safely wake sleepwalkers.

(02:16):
Don't do it violently, of course, but you're not going
to kill them either. Now that we know some of
the facts, it's time to figure out who's taking these
midnight rambles. Weirdly enough, children tend to have a higher
likelihood of sleepwalking. This parasomnia appears to run in families,
and it occurs more often in boys than in girls,
and sleepwalking in general is more common than you might think.

(02:40):
A study at the Stanford University School of Medicine found
that one in five U S adults are prone to
sleep walking, and that twenty two percent reports some form
of it. Since childhood, parasomnias have been called errors in
timing and balance in the brain. More technically, it could
be called a disorder of arousal, meaning that something triggers

(03:02):
the brain into awakening from deep n REM sleep stage,
so the person is in a transition state between sleeping
and waking. So why do kids experience it more often
and why do they grow out of it? Some researchers
argue that kids brains aren't mature enough to fully comprehend
sleep cycles, or that areas of their brains don't develop

(03:23):
at the same pace, And since n REM sleep is
a period of hormone release, it's possible that hormonal releases
may have something to do with sleepwalking. Most adults who
walk in their sleep did the same as children, exhaustion, stress,
some medicines, illnesses, and alcohol can all contribute to sleep walking.
And there's one last myth to bust here. Sleepwalking really

(03:46):
can be dangerous. It's been linked to seizures as well
as disorders like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Some people throughout history
have even argued successfully that they killed someone while they
were sleepwalking. Yeah. Today's episode was written by Christian I'm

(04:07):
Pretty Sure and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is
a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. To
hear more from Christian, check out his pop culture podcast
super Context, and, of course, for more on this and
lots of other topics on the go, visit our home planet,
how stuff Works dot com. Plus for more podcasts from
my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.