Sleepwalking

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Sleepwalking (also called noctambulism or somnambulism), under the larger category of Parasomnias, is a sleep disorder where the sufferer engages in activities that are normally associated with wakefulness while asleep or in a sleeplike state. Sleepwalking can affect people of any age. It generally occurs when an individual awakes suddenly from Slow Wave Sleep (SWS or sometimes referred to as "deep sleep"), causing the sleepwalking episode. In children and young adults, up to 25% of the night is spent in SWS. However this decreases as the person ages until none can be measured in the geriatric individual. For this reason, children and young adults (or anyone else with high amount of SWS), are more likely to be woken up and, for the same reasons, they are witnessed to have many more episodes than the older individuals.

Statistics

Somewhere between 1% and 17% of U.S. children sleepwalk, and juveniles are seen to be those more prone to the activity.
Some 18% of Americans are prone to the act, roughly 2 in 11 of the US population
One study showed that the highest prevalence of sleepwalking was 16.7% for children of 11 to 12 years of age.
Boys are seen to be more likely to sleepwalk than girls.

Activities such as eating, dressing or even driving cars have also been recorded as taking place while the subjects are technically asleep. Contrary to popular belief, most cases of sleepwalking do not consist of walking around (without the conscious knowledge of the subject). Most cases of somnambulism occur when the person is woken up (something or someone disturbs their SWS), the person may sit up, look around and immediately go back to sleep. But these kinds of incidence are rarely noticed or reported unless recorded in a sleep clinic.

Sleepwalkers engage in their activities with their eyes open so they can navigate their surroundings, not with their eyes closed and their arms outstretched as parodied in cartoons and Hollywood productions. The victims' eyes may have a glazed or empty appearance and if questioned, the subject will be slow to answer and will be unable to respond in an intelligible manner.

While sleepwalking itself does not inherently pose a health concern, accidents may happen as the subject is performing actions without the control of conscious mind. If the walker commits a criminal offence while asleep, the defence of automatism may be available (see automatism (case law) for a detailed discussion of the laws in various countries).

A common myth surrounding this disorder is that one should never wake sleepwalkers while they are engaged in the activity. In truth, there is no implicit danger in waking sleepwalkers, though the subjects may be disoriented or embarrassed when awakened. The danger lies not in the fact that something might happen to the sleepwalker, but to the individual doing the waking, as occasionally the sleepwalkers get aggressive when interrupted. Although the majority of the time, nothing happens, it is not unheard of for assaults or even homicide to occur (though the latter is extremely rare). However sleepwalkers are much more likely to endanger themselves than anyone else. When sleepwalkers are a danger to themselves or others, (for example, when climbing up or down steps or trying to use a potentially dangerous tool such as a stove or a knife), steering them away from the danger or even waking them is advisable. It has even been reported that people have fallen out of windows while sleepwalking and died as a result.

While sleepwalking, conductor Harry F. Rosenthal has sat up in bed, conducted, and vocalized instruments, according to his wife.

Sleepwalking is a major theme in the classic silent German Expressionist film Das Kabinett des Dr. Kaligari (English title: The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari) 1919.

In Shakespeare's famous play Macbeth, Lady Macbeth is mentioned to be a sleepwalker, leading up to her eventual madness and suicide.

External links

['Sleepwalker' accused of murder - BBC news article dated 10 March 2005]
[Teen 'sleepwalks to top of crane'] - BBC news article dated 6 July 2005
http://www.absm.org/Diplomates/listing.htm - A worldwide listing of doctors certified by the American Board of Sleep Medicine
[Sleep Walking Overview, Causes and Treatment]

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