Typically, when people hear the word “sleepwalking,” they imagine a typical person in pajamas, walking around the house while asleep, sometimes even talking. But sleepwalkers are capable of more, as a new study has shown.
Scientifically, this deviation from the norm is called “somnambulism” and is characterized by various active movements during sleep that the sleeping person does not consciously control, meaning they occur unconsciously.
A new study on the behavior of sleepwalkers was conducted by researchers from Semmelweis University in Budapest, Hungary, and published in the Journal of Clinical Neurology. Below is a complete list of the most common actions identified by them that sleepwalkers perform during sleep.
The list is sorted by frequency:
Speaking understandable sentences
Uttering incomprehensible speech
Walking in sleep
Moving hands
Laughing or crying
Eating some food
Taking a knife and attempting to cut something with it
Striking with hands (fists) or feet (kicking)
Engaging in sex
Driving a car
“Sitting, getting out of bed, and walking are typical of so-called non-rapid eye movement (NREM) parasomnias, which mainly occur during deep sleep. In this case, the person is as if on the verge between sleep and wakefulness.
Sometimes their actions may involve handling sharp objects, leaving the house, or driving a car. And they may even eat or engage in sex,” explains the lead author of the study, Vivian Correia.
Sexual activities among sleepwalkers are most commonly found in men and occur after alcohol consumption or experiencing severe stress. Sometimes such sleepwalkers wake up right in the middle of sex and cannot understand what is happening.
In some cases, this behavior could even lead to legal consequences, as a sleepwalker who suddenly decides to have sex with their partner without obtaining consent could be considered as committing assault.
Scientists explain that driving a car during sleepwalking is not the same as falling asleep at the wheel. In the case of sleepwalking, these individuals get out of bed at home, go outside, get behind the wheel of a car, start the engine, and begin driving somewhere. And all of this happens while they are asleep.
For the study, researchers searched the internet for recent videos from various users showing how they sleep and experience sleepwalking. A total of 224 videos were selected, including 68 showing sleepwalking in children, 40 in the elderly, and 116 in young people.
Most often, they found talking in sleep and emotional outbursts (crying or laughter), as well as random hand movements. The other phenomena listed above were very rare.
Sleepwalking was generally less common in the elderly than in children and young people, however, elderly men more often than children and young people exhibited “aggressive behavior in bed.”
It was also found that women cried or laughed much more often compared to men, and women more often exhibited “kitchen” sleepwalking – meaning they would get up, go to the kitchen, and try to cook something there, cut with a knife, or mix with a blender.
According to the researchers, they estimate that sleepwalking occurs in approximately 10%-15% of children, but it may disappear with age. Overall, scientists attribute the cause of sleepwalking to various stresses, mental disorders, increased anxiety, sleep deprivation, or alcohol consumption.
For obvious reasons, studying the manifestations of sleepwalking through just watching videos provides very limited results without accurately accounting for a plethora of data, so the Hungarian team urges other researchers to use more comprehensive methods.
