Familiarly, sleepwalking is a well-known sleep disorder, however, sleepwalking can also be studied in neuroscience journals and is characterized by an unconscious awakening that causes people to numb in the house or even on the street.
During an episode of sleepwalking, people can simply walk aimlessly and even perform quite complex activities, such as cooking or driving a car.
This disorder is characterized by two fundamental aspects
During an episode of sleepwalking, the person suffering from this condition exhibits unconsciously uncontrolled behavior, with no ability to react to external stimuli and strong autonomic activation (sweating, tachycardia?).
Also, if the person wakes up during an episode, they do so confusingly. On the other hand, what usually happens is that people spontaneously return to bed and continue to sleep normally.
To talk about this disorder it is necessary to understand how sleep works, depending on muscle tone, brain activity and motor activity of the eyes, sleep is mainly divided into two types:
Thus, during the night, you go from one stage to another, in cycles, all of them essential for rest, if you want to know more about each of them you can consult this article.
Sleepwalking that occurs in phase N3 is classified as a parasomnia of NREM sleep, with night terrors and confusing awakenings.
In fact, there is a hypothesis that these three conditions are, in fact, the same excitation disorder (brain activation level), but with different manifestations.
A phase of high slow wave activity precedes episodes of sleepwalking. Slow or delta waves represent synchronized, rhythmic and, as the name suggests, slow in the front and center areas of the brain, such as a high-voltage phase and another phase of inactivity for a few milliseconds.
Sleepwalking, although known for its external manifestations and has been the subject of research and study for more than five decades, remains a mystery as to its causes.
However, several hypotheses have already been established on the root of its two main characteristics.
On the one hand, it is argued that it is a slow-wave sleep disorder; in the sleepwalker brain there does not appear to be continuity of REM sleep, but abrupt changes in the frequency and amplitude of waves, while in individuals who do not suffer from sleepwalking, there is this transition.
When the disorder exists, there is an increase in spontaneous awakenings exclusively in slow sleep, and an increase in activity in the other phases.
On the other hand, sleepwalking, according to neuroscience, is considered a disorder of cerebral arousal or activation, from this point of view the sleepwalker is between a state of complete activation and an NREM sleep state.
That is, he is neither fully awake nor fully asleep, which implies the existence of a slight activation of the prefrontal areas when they should be inactive, however, it is not yet clear why these changes are occurring.
Besides all this, sleepwalking is linked to other factors: fragmentation or lack of sleep, fever, substance use, stress and, surprisingly, also with pregnancy.
In addition, there are other pathologies that can lead to this disorder, such as obsessive-compulsive symptoms, schizoids, anxiety, depressive or even encephalopathic, cognitive impairment or migraines.
Their relationship to all these symptoms has led experts to hypothesize that brain mechanisms such as systems involved in regulating dopamine, acetylcholine or serotonin might be involved.
In this sense, there is not yet an effective treatment for sleepwalking, what is prescribed are anti-stress and benzodiazepine treatments, such as clonazepam and other antiepileptics, antidepressants and melatonin.