They can walk around the house, move objects around, or even get to make breakfast. It is very easy to imagine that in this state they can put themselves in risky situations such as falling down stairs, hitting or cutting themselves. One of the factors that seem to favor sleepwalking episodes is sleep deprivation, although it is unknown how this affects the brain of sleepwalkers compared to those who do not exhibit this type of behavior.
In order to find out how the hours of sleep affect the brain of these people, Thien Thanh Dang-Vu, from the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine, and other researchers from various Canadian centers, have carried out an experiment in which ten sleepwalkers and 12 other non-sleepwalkers. In their work, they used neuroimaging techniques to analyze the changes in the brain blood flow of the participants after a normal night’s sleep and compare them with what happened after a night without sleep.
The results have recently been published in the journal PLOS ONE (2015), and show that after a sleepless night and being awake at the time of the test, the brain of sleepwalkers behaves differently from that of other participants. Specifically, the authors found that cerebral blood flow decreased in the inferior temporal gyrus on both sides of the brain.
One question that, according to the researchers, remains to be ascertained is whether these changes in cerebral perfusion are also associated with some type of problem in cognitive functions, such as memory or object recognition. Perhaps future studies will shed more light on this curious phenomenon, but for now it seems that sleeping well is a factor that could reduce the probability of suffering an episode of sleepwalking through better brain function.
Marisa Fernández, Senior Neuropsychologist, Unobrain
