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Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey, brain Stuff,

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Speaker 1: I'm more in vocal Bomb and I've got another classic

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Speaker 1: episode for you today from our former host, Christian Sager.

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Speaker 1: This one is about the phenomenon of sleepwalking. I myself

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Speaker 1: used to sleepwalk sometimes when I was a kid, but

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Speaker 1: I grew out of it, and as it turns out,

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Speaker 1: that's not all that uncommon. Here's Christian. Hi, I'm Christian Sager,

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Speaker 1: and this is brain Stuff. Have you ever seen someone sleepwalking?

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Speaker 1: It's creepy, right. They're just sort of shambling around like

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Speaker 1: a zombie, and not one of those super fast World

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Speaker 1: War Z type zombies, but more of the slow, clumsy,

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Speaker 1: walking dead type. They might even have glassy eyes or

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Speaker 1: a bland, blank expression, and when they wake up they

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Speaker 1: won't remember what happened. So what the heck is going

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Speaker 1: on with sleepwalking? How does it work, who does it affect?

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Speaker 1: And what are the common misconceptions about it? Well, first,

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Speaker 1: let's define sleep walking. If you want to get fancy,

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Speaker 1: you can call it somnambulism. It's a type of parasomnia

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Speaker 1: or abnormal disruptive behavior that occurs during sleep. This category

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Speaker 1: also includes stuff like bedwedding, and teeth grinding. Sleepwalkers may

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Speaker 1: also act out a number of activities during this process.

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Speaker 1: These could be simple things like eating to more complex

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Speaker 1: processes like driving a car, yeah driving. For centuries, people

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Speaker 1: have been trying to figure out what's going on with sleepwalking,

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Speaker 1: and while scientists haven't fully cracked the case, we do

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Speaker 1: know more and more about this phenomenon and it's helping

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Speaker 1: us bust some myths. One, sleepwalkers probably aren't acting out

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Speaker 1: their dreams. We know this because most sleepwalking occurs during

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Speaker 1: the first third of the night, when your body is

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Speaker 1: in n rem or non rem sleep. This is the

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Speaker 1: deepest part of your sleep cycle. It's a time when

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Speaker 1: your body repairs it self and releases hormones. You're not

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Speaker 1: dreaming while this goes on, and because your brain will

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Speaker 1: resist awakening in this state, it may be difficult to

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Speaker 1: snap a sleepwalker out of it. But don't be afraid

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Speaker 1: to try, because here's another fact. You can safely wake sleepwalkers.

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Speaker 1: Don't do it violently, of course, but you're not going

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Speaker 1: to kill them either. Now that we know some of

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Speaker 1: the facts, it's time to figure out who's taking these

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Speaker 1: midnight rambles. Weirdly enough, children tend to have a higher

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Speaker 1: likelihood of sleepwalking. This parasomnia appears to run in families,

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Speaker 1: and it occurs more often in boys than in girls,

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Speaker 1: and sleepwalking in general is more common than you might think.

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Speaker 1: A study at the Stanford University School of Medicine found

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Speaker 1: that one in five U S adults are prone to

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Speaker 1: sleep walking, and that twenty two percent reports some form

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Speaker 1: of it. Since childhood, parasomnias have been called errors in

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Speaker 1: timing and balance in the brain. More technically, it could

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Speaker 1: be called a disorder of arousal, meaning that something triggers

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Speaker 1: the brain into awakening from deep n REM sleep stage,

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Speaker 1: so the person is in a transition state between sleeping

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Speaker 1: and waking. So why do kids experience it more often

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Speaker 1: and why do they grow out of it? Some researchers

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Speaker 1: argue that kids brains aren't mature enough to fully comprehend

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Speaker 1: sleep cycles, or that areas of their brains don't develop

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Speaker 1: at the same pace, And since n REM sleep is

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Speaker 1: a period of hormone release, it's possible that hormonal releases

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Speaker 1: may have something to do with sleepwalking. Most adults who

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Speaker 1: walk in their sleep did the same as children, exhaustion, stress,

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Speaker 1: some medicines, illnesses, and alcohol can all contribute to sleep walking.

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Speaker 1: And there's one last myth to bust here. Sleepwalking really

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Speaker 1: can be dangerous. It's been linked to seizures as well

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Speaker 1: as disorders like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Some people throughout history

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Speaker 1: have even argued successfully that they killed someone while they

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Speaker 1: were sleepwalking. Yeah. Today's episode was written by Christian I'm

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Speaker 1: Pretty Sure and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff is

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Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. To

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Speaker 1: hear more from Christian, check out his pop culture podcast

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Speaker 1: super Context, and, of course, for more on this and

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Speaker 1: lots of other topics on the go, visit our home planet,

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Speaker 1: how stuff Works dot com. Plus for more podcasts from

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Speaker 1: my heart Radio, visit the heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.