What Is It?
For a lot of people sleeping is the time of rest and the most movement you do is the normal tossing and turning but for others sleep can be a time to endlessly walk around the house, drive a car or cook a meal, all without them being consciously aware. This is called slep-walking or Somnabulism and scientists are still trying to figure out exactly why it occurs but what they do know is that it most frequently happens to children and occurs during the deepest stages of sleep: stages 3 and 4. This is your deepest sleep where your brain waves are the slowest. In contrast, during REM sleep or Rapid Eye Movement, your brain activity active and this is the stage in which most of your dreams occur and to keep you from acting out those dreams, your body’s muscles become temporarily paralyzed.
The Reason:
So it makes sense that mostly walking occurs in the stage other than REM sleep since you cannot really walk around when your muscles are not able to move and by the same logic sleep-walking also ocurs mostly during deeper stages of sleep. Now since the sleep walker is in a deep stage of sleep, it will be quite difficult to wake them up. If you try they will be really confused about why they are not in bed. It is not dangerous to do this but be prepared to explain the situation if you do. But with al that said, why does sleep-walking occur in the first place?
Ideas:
One hypothesis is that people rise from their bed when their brain attempts to go straight from non-REM sleep to being awake. Rather than going through the rest of the sleep cycle and it’s not that something triggered this transition. This is the part that scientists are still not sure on but they have a few ideas. As mentioned before sleepwalking mostly occurs in children so some scientists think that children are more prone to sleepwalking because their brains aren’t yet fully developed. It maybe that all of the growth hormones are triggering the kid to rise but it may also have to do with inhibitory neurotransmitters. See there is a neurotransmitter called GABA that stifles the brain’s motor system. For adults neurotransmitter ususally does a good job inhibit the body’s motion but for kids the neurons that release aren’t fully developed yet, so their motor systems may still be active and this can lead to the kidwalking around in their sleep. Children usually grow out of sleepwalking as they age and their brains fully develop. But if sleepwalking persist into adulthood, it may be linked to a mental disorder like alcoholism or clinical depression. Most of the time it is not dangerous but if it gets to be you may want to seek out a doctor for help.
Transcripted By Benazir Elahee Munni