How Sleepwalking Works

People used to think that sleepwalkers acted out their dreams. However, sleepwalking occurs during the deepest stages of sleep when you are not dreaming.

• Mental health professionals state that sleepwalking is an arousal disorder, meaning that something triggers the brain, so the person is in a transition state between sleeping and waking.
• Most sleepwalkers are children. It could be because their brains outpace others in development or that a child's brain is too immature to understand waking and sleeping cycles.
• Children tend to sleepwalk more when they are overly tired or stressed. The same factors affect adult sleepwalkers, as well as medicines, alcohol, and fever illnesses.
• Sleepwalking has been linked to seizures, REM sleep disorders, and brain disorders like Parkinson's and Alzheimer's.

In the arts, sleepwalking is linked to blood, danger, the occult, and loss of control.

• Shakespeare used a sleepwalking scene in Macbeth to reveal a key element in Lady Macbeth's character development. She plots a murder but doesn't want to pull it off. In a sleepwalking episode, she confesses her sins.
• In Bellini's opera "La Sonnambula," a sleepwalking woman is accused of being unfaithful to her husband when she innocently wakes up in another man's room.
• The plot of "The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari" centers on the idea of a murderer sleepwalker controlled by an evil doctor.
• In "Dracula," the vampire sinks his teeth into Lucy during a bout of sleepwalking.

Sleepwalking isn't the only parasomnia.

• There is sleep sex - sexual behavior during sleep.
• Sleep-eating is associated with the sleep aid Ambien, where people eat anything, from tubs of margarine, eating cigarettes and raw meat.
• Bruxism is where some people clench or grind their teeth while they sleep. It can damage the teeth, give you headaches, and make your jaw hurt.
• Sleeptalking, also named somniloquy, is where the person could just make noises, or could have a long one-sided conversation.
• Sleep enuresis, or bed-wetting.