10. Night Walkers

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I'm Hannah Fry.

And I'm Dara O'Brien.

And this is Curious Cases.

The show where we take your quirkiest questions, your crunchiest conundrums, and then we solve them.

With the power of science.

I mean, do we always solve them?

I mean, the hit rate's pretty low.

But it is with science.

It is with science.

Do you know what frightens me?

Tell me.

Okay, well, see, I'm a night person.

I'm of the night.

A vampire dara.

I am vampire dara.

Well, I like, for example, I like working at night.

My energy levels are quite high until about three in the morning.

That's what I liked.

I naturally want to go to bed then.

Okay, this is not fit in with the normal, see your normal family lifetime.

Are you sitting in your house quietly at sort of 1 a.m.

in the morning?

Oh, totally, totally.

I'm totally.

Listening for sounds.

No, I'm not.

No, no, I'm doing work or I'm watching.

I'm not like constantly engaging, but I have half an ear because no one else should be up.

It's just me.

And what would absolutely freak me out would be sleepwalking.

If one of your family suddenly

started wandering around.

Yeah, it would totally, I would be.

Only to have you creep up on them from behind.

With a hurley.

I'd be aware of what would happen, but it would be...

I think inherently I find sleepwalking kind of frightening.

I know people find it comic a lot of the time, but I would find it really petrifying.

But this is you imagining other people sleepwalking and you discovering them.

Yeah.

What about you sleepwalking?

Oh, my sleep album would be benign and whimsical.

It would be lovely.

It would be charming in your life.

I'd say.

Skiping along down the stairs in the middle of the night.

I don't, and sadly I never have.

Have you ever?

So I think I probably have once or twice, but I'm not like a habitual sleepwalker.

However, I do have a friend who was an extreme sleepwalker who had a number of different incidents.

My favourite of which was one night they got up, they went downstairs into the kitchen and they were dreaming that the kitchen was full of cashew nuts.

So they picked up a cashew nut and then they gave it a lick and it didn't taste like a cashew nut.

So they turned on the light and that was the point when they woke up and realised that they just picked up a slug off the floor and licked it.

Okay why are slugs licking?

Student house.

Long story, long story.

But that is our topic for today because we have been asked to investigate by listener Abigail from Swatham in Norfolk.

She wrote to us curiouscases at bbc.co.uk to share some of her experiences with sleepwalking.

I have always talked in my sleep and started sleepwalking in my teens.

I remember having a dream about taking the pictures off the wall and I woke up in the morning and found all of the pictures that had been on the bedroom wall stacked up very neatly against my chest of drawers, which was it was a really weird experience.

I woke up one morning and I'd managed to google a Turkish language course in my sleep, just as you do.

I really want to know why we sleepwalk,

what's the mechanics behind it, I suppose, and if any other animals do it, because it doesn't seem like a very good idea.

Wow, wide awake with us in the studio, we have Professor Guy Leschina, a consultant neurologist who specialises in sleep disorders.

And Professor Russell Foster, who leads the Sleep and Circadian Neuroscience Institute at the University of Oxford.

Russell, we'll get to sleep walking, but tell us about the different phases of sleep, the different stages.

I mean, for so long, people thought that nothing was going on within the brain whilst we slept.

It was essentially being turned off.

Then we get to the 1950s, where people sort of were developing electroencephalography, which is the planting of electrodes over the surface of the skull using a sort of a conductive jelly.

And that began to show some really interesting changes across sleep.

So we go, it's all about describing the electrical activity.

So when we're in the wake state and thinking about stuff, you can get 35 cycles per second, so really high frequency.

And in deep sleep, that will drop to less than one oscillation, and it'll be a great big oscillation.

So on the basis of the sizes and the frequency of the electrical activity recorded, you go from a quiet resting state into non-rem sleep.

And that's divided into three stages, one, two, and three.

And three is this deep slow wave sleep then you switch very rapidly back up to two and one and then another type of sleep called rapid eye movement sleep which is when you're essentially paralyzed from the neck down your eyes are moving underneath your your eyelids and

that is sort of where we experience our most vivid and complicated dreams then you go back down again into stages one two three

then back up to REM and you can go through these cycles which last about 70 to 90 minutes, perhaps four or five every night, ultimately waking up from rapid eye movement REM sleep.

And in each of these phases, are different things being done by the brain or by the body?

Yeah, it's difficult to know precisely what's going on.

In fact,

one of my friends just said that trying to work out what the brain is doing from EG is a bit like trying to work out what's going on in a building by looking at when the lights go on and off and the toilets flush.

I mean, it's a crude measure,

but I have to say, with more recent studies where you've used high density EG, we're getting a better idea of the localization of different brain activities across the brain.

Can I then get to REM?

Because I think REM might be the point that's important here.

The rapid eye movement is our dream sleep.

Well, that's how it was viewed.

It's certainly when we have our most complicated and vivid dreams, and we tend to remember those dreams because we're waking from REM sleep.

But what's happened over the past few years is that dream-like states have also been reported in non-REM sleep.

And so,

yeah, I mean, you can dream in both states.

And do we think that there is a particular phase of sleep that leads to things like sleepwalking?

It's deep sleep.

It's slow-wave sleep.

And it's in non-REM sleep.

That's the first thing I find surprising.

The time that we know we dream most vividly isn't necessary, so it wouldn't necessarily be linked to no.

And that's really important because in REM sleep, you're paralyzed from the neck down.

So you don't normally show any movements.

In non-REM sleep, you can.

And that's where many of the parasomnias, these sorts of strange behaviours of sleepwalking and all the rest of it occur.

All right, so this general process, as you say, that happens on average amongst people is all well and good, but sometimes it goes wrong.

And that is, I guess, when you end up seeing them.

Yes, indeed.

Do you you have some stories as to what might happen when things go wrong?

I've got lots of stories.

You know, the range of what people do is really quite dramatic.

On, you know, on one level, it can be very, very simple.

It can be just sitting up in bed and muttering.

On other occasions, you know, I've had patients who have driven a car in their sleep, a woman who rode a motorbike in her sleep, people who have...

For real, for real.

As far as we can tell.

This is a woman somewhere on the south coast of England who

was

known to be a sleepwalker.

Her first events happened in childhood.

And when she was lodging with somebody in her 20s, she had a motorbike that she loved, and she was spotted riding through the streets of where she was living by her landlady.

And the landlady reported seeing her at two o'clock in the morning, clutching her motorcycle helmet and driving around.

And she had no recollection whatsoever.

And then, in later life, very similarly, she had

a car rather than a motorbike and was seen driving up and down the seafront at two o'clock in the morning and this caused her so much concern because obviously she was very worried about the fact that she was driving around in her sleep that she bought a time-locked safe so she stored her keys in this time-locked safe and it would only open after about 6 a.m.

This is the bit that I always find such a jarring and pathetic.

The woman for example who was riding a motorbike and then later driving a car.

So presuming her eyes are open.

Yes.

So why does that wake her up?

That's the thing I always find.

Well these I just associate that with being, you know, with your eyes being open being, that's a waking state.

Most people in non-rem parasomnias, particularly when they get out of bed, will have their eyes open.

But I think the way to think of these events is not necessarily that they are in sleep.

They are as a result of the brain not functioning normally, that parts of the brain are awake and parts of the brain are asleep.

So it's not like...

these individuals are deep asleep.

It's just that in this state, the parts of the brain responsible for rational thinking and for memory are switched off.

But they're taking in sensory responses.

Yeah, and

they will have conversations.

You know, it's very common for people to have conversations with others in the bedroom when they're in one of these states.

It may not be the most sensible conversation, but they can articulate, they can give full-blown responses, they can interact with their environment.

So, you know, for example, rewiring or taking pictures and piling them neatly by the side of the bed.

These are all

fairly complex behaviours that involve interaction with the environment on quite a complex level.

Are they responding to impulses?

I mean do they get up and go to the toilet for example?

Is that a...

Yes, going to the toilet, I've seen people cook meals.

I've seen people eat stuff that they wouldn't normally eat during the day.

You know, real range of incredibly complex behaviour.

And the way that I think of it is that actually the majority of their brain is probably awake at that time because of the complexity of what it is that they're doing.

But there remain some core parts of the brain that are in very deep sleep, which is why they don't remember these events.

In terms of the complexity of activities that people can potentially do, there is actually an extraordinary case that I want you to hear.

Because this is a chap who manages to earn a living in his sleep.

Have a listen to this.

So my name is Lee Hadwin, Lee Stewart Hadwin, and most people know me now around the world as the sleep artist.

From about the age of four or five,

I used to get up as a kid and just, you know, generally sleepwalk.

My mum and dad had a little area underneath the stairs, cupboard, so I used to always go in there and play.

And I just started scribbling on the walls.

And then when I was around about 14, 15 years of age, I'd got up in the middle of the night.

And the next day, I'd draw on three very small Marilyn Monroe drawings.

I think because I was in high school and there was a lot of the Marilyn Monroe merchandise around back in the late 80s and it sort of went from there really because my artistic level in school wasn't the best so it was from that stage really where the the drawing started becoming a lot more intricate and what I was producing in my sleep I can't produce whilst I'm awake.

Sometimes I can do two drawings in a week and then I might go six, seven months without drawing anything and I've had a period before like for two or three years where I've not drawn anything.

I sort of go through stages.

I went through a stage just drawing fairies and sort of the female form and then there's a section where it's just lines because at the moment I've been doing noughts and crosses for the last three years so I don't I don't know where that's come from so I've got like 40 40 pieces of just noughts and crosses so a lot of my friends yeah they take the Mickey out of me and keep saying who won who won the game

Do you want to see a picture of some of the stuff he's drawn?

Yeah, sure.

It's pretty remarkable.

Some of it's quite good, right?

This here goes a little, it's quite abstract, that one there.

This one here, this is a sort of motif of the different fairies.

But it's quite complicated, which is what I wasn't what I was expecting, I'll be honest.

You know, he's got actually consistent lighting on his fairies.

But there's shady details.

I mean, I've always presumed that if you're doing these kind of episodes, you're quite clumsy, and this is very fine detail.

It is, it is.

Like up on the wings there.

Look at that.

Oh, true life on gospel.

That's very pretty.

Yeah.

Yeah.

$13,250.

Wow, okay, fine.

I mean, impressive, impressive, but not.

You don't pay for that much for you?

Yeah.

Handy, though, to wake up and bank 13 grand.

Good jing.

Yeah.

What do you think of this?

Well, you know, look, I think people can do some extraordinarily complicated things at night, as I've already said.

But do something that they couldn't do while awake.

Yeah, I mean, that's interesting.

So certainly there are patients who describe things that they do at night that they feel that they could not do during the day in terms of, for example, exhibiting strength.

So, doing breaking objects that they really don't have the strength to do during the day.

The other good example of that is in patients with Parkinson's disease.

They frequently act out their dreams.

They exhibit this condition, REM sleep behavior disorder.

And they will often be very weak, very slow, unable to walk, speaking very slowly during the day.

But when they act out their dreams at night, their voices will be strong, their movements will be quick.

And so it it illustrates the fact that there are certain parts of the brain that are probably bypassed in sleep that during the day may cause problems.

And so that in itself would not necessarily make me cynical about this.

I mean, I guess I'd be quite keen to get his brainwaves whilst he's drawing these pictures.

Why isn't he doing knots and crosses now?

Well, knots and crosses.

Okay, well, they're not going to sell for £4,000.

So does this, this seems quite atypical.

The artistry how it seems quite atypical.

To create something complicated that would take time to do i mean how long are episodes normally well they can vary enormously um so we tend to have longer rem episodes during the second half of the night than compared to the first half of the night but but what would you say guy i mean an episode of slow wave sleep would be it can be what 10 15 minutes

20 minutes at a maximum although you know there are some uh non-rem parasomnias that have been described that go on for an hour or two.

I mean, if you look at some of the legal literature, so there's a very famous case from Canada from the 1980s or 1990s, a chap called Kenneth Parks who allegedly drove 20 odd miles, murdered his mother-in-law, tried to murder his father-in-law and apparently did all of that in a sleepwalking event.

Now you can choose to believe that or not, but certainly there are some individuals who

exhibit non-rem parasomnias that do go on for quite some time.

And if normally do the episodes end with somebody turning around from wherever they are and going back to bed?

Or does their brain move to a different phase of sleep and they just, wherever they are, go into this next phase of sleep?

Found at the scene of a crime.

Essentially, yes.

Is that what happens?

All of the above.

You can end up essentially waking up and not knowing what you've done somewhere completely distant, or you can go back to bed and have, again, no recollection of what you've been up to.

I certainly terrified my parents when I was about seven.

I woke up, but I was clearly having a parasomnia episode went out of the bedroom peed in my mother's shopping basket

then went into the sitting room and asked my father where's mummy

and then they guided me back to bed I don't know what they did about the shopping basket but anyway

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Okay, so these are the very unusual instances, murder, shopping baskets, etc.

Not to bundle them into the same category, of course.

But there has been some really careful research on much more common types of sleepwalking.

And of course, this is quite difficult to study in a lab, I'm sure you would attest.

But Professor Francesca Sitlari from the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience has found a way to do it.

So the idea was to study consciousness in sleepwalkers.

We invited them to the lab.

We equipped them with high-density EEG to record brain activity.

We had them come for two nights.

A first night where they just slept uninterrupted by us and then the following night they were not allowed to sleep.

So we did a total sleep deprivation.

And then when they entered slow wave sleep, so the deep sleep, we would play very loud sounds through the computer until the participants either woke up or in some cases presented a parasomnia episode.

One of the hallmarks of these experiences was waking up with the impression that something was about to happen, usually something terrible, and that they still had time or position to prevent this from happening.

One participant stood up on the bed and she started to touch the wall next to the bed and then she later reported that she had the impression that there were ladybugs on the wall, falling down the wall and she was trying to catch them to save them from falling and from dying.

There was another participant, she told us she had the impression that a piece of furniture was actually going to come down on her.

But what was interesting is that when we interviewed participants, they almost never mentioned the sound.

What was also interesting is that these patients, especially during the first night where we did not play the sounds, had spontaneous episodes where they just spontaneously had exactly the same type of behaviors.

And so whatever we did with the sound is probably something that mimics what happens naturally in the brain in these patients.

That's some extraordinary research, Russell.

So, actually, to find a way to get people to do it in the lab.

I think it's fantastic.

And we were talking about, you know, EEG in the early days was pretty crude.

This is a high-density EEG.

So Francesca's beginning to work out which areas of the brain are actually being active during these parasomnias.

And it is a phenomenal, because, you know, these people are acting out their parasomnia.

And what they've shown, I think, beautifully is that the areas that are being activated during a parasomnia are very like the areas that would be activated during a dream.

But then going back to what you were saying about rapid eye movement and your most sort of

narrative-based dreaming,

as it were, if this is non-REM sleep,

but then these people are not in like zombie-like states.

They have stories going on in their heads.

Absolutely.

And I think it's fascinating, because there's been some very interesting work about what REM sleep dreaming might be doing.

And so some fascinating studies have shown that after the Twin Towers were destroyed by terrorist action, people were having vivid dreams, but not of planes going into skyscrapers, but it was

being attacked, it was being overwhelmed by a tsunami.

So, this great emotional sort of state was essentially being integrated into a dream-like state and presumably playing out, you know, those emotional experiences.

So,

in fact, dreams are not a replication of the event.

That would be post-traumatic stress disorder.

This is a way of the brain come to terms with rather vivid and striking emotions.

Which is why I guess dreams don't always make sense.

Yeah, exactly.

Yes.

But you mentioned something really important, which is that there is a qualitative difference for most people between the dreams that you have in non-REM sleep and in REM sleep.

So in REM sleep, they tend to be more narrative.

They tend to have one thing happening, then another, and then another.

Whereas actually, the clip that you played of Francesca, that she was describing the experiences of of

one of the patients in in her study is very characteristic of non-rem parasomnia dreams they're usually little vignettes uh visual imagery not often associated with hearing anything or talking to anybody so actually just by talking to individuals about what it is they're experiencing that can sometimes be really really helpful in trying to work out what is actually going on it's important to note by the way that even though we described how francesca did the experiment we are not recommending that you play a loud sound to your partner if you happen to be awake and they're not in the hope of creating an event like this.

Unless you're carrying a hurling stick.

Yeah, and are armed and ready to do the situation.

We may have created the perfect recipe for you to induce this, but that's not the intention of this, part of the not at all.

What we want to do.

It's interesting you were saying about the playing the noises.

Actually, people often do that for themselves in that we do sometimes see individuals who have these kinds of events when their mobile phone next to them buzzes in the middle of the night or if they're living in the Heathrow flight path when a plane goes overhead.

So environmental noise in actually in some individuals is a very good trigger for these kinds of events.

Occasionally, I have seen one individual who only had these events when their partner rolled over in bed and they were in a very creaky bed.

And so the creaking of the bed was what triggered off these parasomnia events.

I love that they've made it the partner's fault.

But it's actually really fascinating because, you know, in Francesca's experiments, she sleep deprived and induced the parasomnia when these individuals were in slow-wave sleep.

And as I understand it, you're much more likely to have parasomnias if you are chronically tired or if you are on certain medications or alcohol, I guess.

I mean, you're presumably getting lots of patients who may well be perhaps alcoholics and having parasomnias.

I don't know.

I think there are lots of people who will get parasomnias when they've been out drinking.

Yeah.

I mean, are we counting those as in...

I'm sorry, not to dismiss that behavior, but I know lots, lots more stories about people who do things after they've been drinking and then for their sleep.

I mean, but does that still fall under a parasomnia?

Well, I think that that is a medico-legal minefield, okay?

But but

there are certainly individuals who will have non-rem parasomnias anyway, but for whom even a couple of glasses of wine or a beer or two might make it much more likely for a non-REM parasomnia to occur.

I'm specifically thinking of a friend of mine who saw another friend of mine cross the room in a house chair at the Edinburgh Festival once and open his laptop and then proceed to use the laptop for something the laptop was not designed for at all.

But it was lifting.

Yes, they basically thought the laptop was the lid of the toilet and the other guy screamed at him just in time and stopped that.

So that's going into Brenton.

Okay, so let's say you're for some reason not keen on peeing in baskets or riding motorcycles naked.

I didn't actually remember the nakedness being part of your story, but you just made that up, but I quite like the sound of that story.

It makes it more salacious.

What can you do if you want to avoid this happening?

Because there will be people listening to this where there is a kind of constant concern of this happening.

So I think that there are some

very straightforward things that you can do.

You can try and work out what the triggers are if there are triggers.

So if you've got a creaky bed, oil the bed, for example.

Making sure that you're not sleep deprived,

making sure that you, if alcohol is a trigger for you, trying to go easy on the alcohol.

there are medications that we can give, but a lot of it is about lifestyle advice.

And if all else fails or you are putting yourself in danger, then that would be the time to consider medication.

Oh, okay.

So

that would be rather rather than, I'm trying to tell you what the other option would be, like whatever that if you had something that you rose from the bed and then it triggers them for lights to go on or for an easy way to wake you up and the alarm to go off to wake you up.

Well I think we certainly recommend alarms for people who have got themselves into trouble by leaving their house in the middle of of the night.

So a door alarm in the middle

on their bedroom door, for example.

Making sure that you've got locks on the windows, you know, some really, really simple things.

These are too simple for me though.

What I want is an alarm system that if I roll out of bed at the wrong time

when I'm sleepwalking, I want disco lights.

I want trumpeteers.

That's what you're thinking of.

The whole thing would be confetti.

Yeah, it would go mad.

Like you'd launch like a huge bada man.

A ta-da bone would occur.

which I think long term in musical theatre.

Long-term in a relationship, that would be quite difficult.

If you're casting walking back up, I'm not sure my wife would be particularly keen to have confetti thrown over her in the middle of the night.

Every second now, here we go with the confetti anyway.

But she creaked the bed, though.

So, you know.

At least 50% of this issue.

Animals.

Our question asked about animals.

Are we the only animal that does this?

Well,

in terms of the primates,

we don't have sleepwalking described in any of the primates that have been discovered so far.

However, there's some really exciting stuff that's emerged over the past few years, which is different sleep states and a potential REM-like sleep state in a great variety of animals.

So the jumping spider, for example, has a particular position and it has movement of the eyes, just kind of like REM eye movements.

And then there's the cuttlefish, which is showing again a particular posture, but it's showing wake-like states in terms of its its changing colour patterns so it it's raised some interesting issues i mean if there's what what is a jumping spider dream well this is well that's it because is it a bird is it in the olympics what is this well it gets to the whole issue of you know consciousness um and and and so is there a chance of consciousness in really animals we'd never have thought of having consciousness maybe primates of course um and and and perhaps some of the the octopuses but and but i mean because we know that dolphins, for example, other animals, sleep with one half of their brain at the same time.

Yeah, uni-hemispheric sleep.

Yeah, absolutely.

So they can keep on moving, as do other.

It's really fascinating.

Some of the seals,

they will have biphasic sleep, you know, both hemispheres on land.

And then when they return to the water, it'll be uni-hemispheric sleep.

So it's an adaptation for keeping moving.

And migrating birds, presumably.

Yeah, that that it, yes, exactly.

So this is like their fuse box has a line down the middle, I guess.

You can switch them more off one side

or the other.

Absolutely.

But it shows the fundamental need for sleep, of course, as well.

Yeah, that absolutely cannot be avoided, even if you have to do a 4,000-mile flight show for Canada.

You still need to get a bit of a rest on the way.

Gentlemen, it's an excellent conversation.

I've not been awake for any of this.

So it's absolutely.

Between me and Dara, we're the seal, right?

Between us, we make one brain.

One brain, yeah.

So I'm hoping we closed our eyes.

I'm hoping we're going to hear back that I made some sense.

So

it's as enjoyable the second time uh, as it was the first time.

Thank you to Russell Foster and to Guy Lechtsiner for your excellent contributions.

So, Abigail, who set the original question to start this, are we basically saying

you've got to set up a confetti gun and disco lights in your

series of wires, trap wires, okay, trip wires, trip wires, tripwires, or pressure pads around the bed, absolutely, and then

numerous guns pointed directly at the bottom, bed, over the bed,

lights.

Also, I think an alarm that

at that moment you and I burst out of the cupboards.

Yeah.

Ba-ba-ba-ba-ba-ba!

And they're there.

You're away.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So.

Every night.

Every night.

Watching Abigail sleep.

It's quite a big commitment from us, isn't it?

It is, yeah.

Why are we signing up for that?

The other option, less effort, just accept that different bits of your brain are going to be on and off at different times.

That's the way the fuse board works, isn't it?

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Sucks!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We demand to be hosted.

Winner, best score.

We demand to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We demand to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.