Between art and suicide - about sleepwalking

Sleepwalking, sleepwalking, is one of the most famous sleep disorders. Movies usually show the sleepwalker with his hands raised in front of him, his eyes closed and his walking mechanical. The reality is even more interesting

Sleep and the strange phenomena that accompany it, such as sleep talking for example, have intrigued scientists since time immemorial. Sleep is an enigma within a mystery wrapped in a blanket. For a long time, the assumption prevailed that the body needs sleep to renew its energy reserves and refresh the organs. Today we know that the body's energy consumption during sleep does not decrease significantly, and that the organs apparently do not need refreshment to function normally. But if sleep was unnecessary, then evolution would have freed us from this need: we are very vulnerable to predators while we sleep. On the other hand, if sleep somehow helped us avoid madmen, we would expect that animals that do not have many enemies - lions, for example - would not need to sleep at all. Still, the lions sleep quite a few hours a day.

Here and there the researchers uncovered intriguing clues to the importance of sleep. Wounds, for example, heal better after quality sleep. Essential hormones are secreted only during sleep and certain toxins in the brain are eliminated from it. For those who do not sleep well, cognitive activities such as learning and memory are affected. It is known that parents of babies, like me for example, suffer from two main problems - the first is impaired memory. Still, we have no real explanation for the sleep phenomenon - and hence we also have difficulty explaining a significant part of the various sleep problems and disorders.

Sleepwalking, sleepwalking, is one of the most famous sleep disorders. Movies usually show the sleepwalker with his hands raised in front of him, his eyes closed and his walking mechanical. This is one of the few cases where reality is much more interesting than the way it is presented in the cinema. Lee Hedwin, a 33-year-old Briton, is an excellent example of this. Every night, Devin gets up from his bed, goes into a little hut under the staircase and starts to paint. At first, the sleepy Devin would draw on any surface he could get his hands on - tables, walls and even the floor. After a few such nights, Devin realized that the apartment was a mess and started scattering papers and paints around the house. In the morning, the fruits of his labor awaited him under the stairs: abstract paintings, doodles and incredibly accurate portraits, usually of Marilyn Monroe. The paintings are not uniform in quality, but some are good enough to appear in galleries and exhibitions. Hadwin remembers nothing of the night's events. When asked what he thinks of his paintings, he usually shrugs. He claims that he does not feel that these are his paintings - he does not remember them, even when he sees himself being photographed on video while painting - and in general, he does not like to paint. Yes, it's strange but true - in his waking life, Devin is not at all interested in painting, and testifies to himself that he has no artistic inclinations or ambitions. Here and there he manages to sell some of the paintings and make money, but in principle he doesn't enjoy it - what's more, his nocturnal art gives him unpleasant migraines in the morning.

To be fair, few sleepwalkers do it as impressively as Britain's Van Haroop. In most cases the entire episode is summed up in a brief rise, settling down in bed and then returning to a deep sleep. But when it's successful, it's really successful. For example, there was a woman who used to feed her cat in her sleep - she discovered the problem when the cat began to suffer from excessive obesity for no apparent reason. Another woman managed to open the computer, log into her e-mail and send an email to her friends saying: "Come tomorrow and sort out the mess here. Dinner and drinks, 4 pm - bring wine and caviar only." The investigators who looked into the case were very impressed by the woman's ability to enter a correct username and password while sleeping, and I can assume that it was also because of the prestige that did not abandon her even for a moment.

Some of the cases described in the literature are much less amusing. In the United States, a young man left his house during a severe storm wearing only underwear, walked to the main road and was run over by a semi-trailer truck whose driver did not notice him in the dark. The police concluded, and one can understand them, that it was a suicide. But the guy in question did not have a depressive past or suicidal tendencies, and on the contrary - he, and his entire family, had a rich history of sleepwalking. The psychiatrist who treated the matter was able to convince the investigators that it was not a case of suicide but an unlucky somnolence. In another case, the body of a policeman was found shot in the head, his hand still holding his gun. Here it was already easier to deduce what was really going on because the man had a history of messing with guns in his sleep, including pointing a loaded gun at his mother and several holes in the walls.

The last examples show the wide variety and sophistication of 'automatism' - behavior devoid of conscious control, which characterizes sleepwalking. Sleep talking is another type of automatism, ranging from short sentences to long speeches. Sleep talking tends to be 'slurred' and unclear the deeper the sleeper is in the sleep cycle. It is interesting to note that usually the speech tends to be dry and devoid of emotion. The previous examples also show the difference between the behavior of men and women during sleepwalking. Men exhibit much more aggressive behavior while sleepwalking. Women are generally more moderate and less violent. This is probably the reason why mostly men seek professional help, which creates the impression that sleepwalking is mostly a male phenomenon. Both men and women sometimes exhibit searching behavior - as if the sleepwalker is trying to find something, perhaps food. This could be an indication that the automatism during sleep is not under the control of the higher intelligence, but a brain layer that is responsible for a more primitive and basic behavior.

[The article is taken from the program Making history!', a podcast about science, technology and history].

To the page from which the photo was taken - CREATIVE COMMON