Sleepwalkers Need Enough Sleep

Sleepwalkers Need Enough Sleep

Summary: Lack of sleep does not only cause physical exhaustion. It may also lead to involuntary walking --- while a person is still fast asleep. This is one of the findings of a research team that studied the impact of sleep deprivation and how it can be associated with cases of sleepwalking.

sleepwalkers

Article Body: April , , Montreal If you want sleepwalkers to roam around the whole night, deprive them of sleep. It may seem ironic, but a Canadian study of sleepwalkers shows that when sleep-deprived, people have a greater tendency to sleepwalk. According to University of Montreals Dr. Antonio Zadra and his colleagues, the study supports recommendations for sleepwalkers to maintain a regular sleep cycle and avoid sleep deprivation. While sleep may seem like a steady state, it actually consists of stages that cycle throughout the night. There are stages of sleep including the REM (rapid eye movement) stage. A complete sleep cycle takes about to minutes and a regular sleep consists of to complete sleep cycles. In Zadras study, sleepwalkers spent a night at a laboratory where they were videotaped. Researchers observed their movements while they were asleep. Most sleepwalkers dont actually sleepwalk every night. The researchers found out that many of the participants in the research had actually sleepwalked. Some of them did so more than once that night, for a total of sleepwalking episodes. On the following day, the participants were kept awake for hours straight to find out how sleep deprivation would affect the sleepwalkers. When they went to bed in the morning, they were all exhausted and were trying to get sleep at an unusual time. The researchers noted that after staying awake for hours, the participants showed much different sleeping patterns compare to the night before. During their catch-up sleep period, people sleepwalked for a total of sleepwalking episodes. This result brought Zadra and his colleagues to conclude that sleep deprivation may encourage sleepwalking in sleepwalkers. The findings could help in diagnosing and treating people for sleepwalking. While this study didn't include a comparison group of people who have never sleepwalked, in the past work of Zadras team, however, they found that healthy people with no history of sleepwalking weren't more likely to sleepwalk when sleep deprived. This study is included in the March edition of the Annals of Neurology.