Automatism

Automatism is a set of brief actions carried out without conscious awareness or control, usually lasting from several seconds to a few minutes, during which the person doing them has little or no memory of the behavior afterward. It ranges from small, purposeless movements such as lip smacking or rubbing the fingers to more complex sequences such as walking, cooking, showering, driving, or holding a conversation. The term covers a wide range of settings: it appears during complex partial seizures in temporal lobe epilepsy, as a side effect of some sleep medications, in schizophrenia, dissociative fugue, Tourette syndrome, narcolepsy, and reactions to traumatic events, and even in ordinary REM sleep, where a dreaming person may talk or open their eyes without waking. It also describes well-learned, routine actions performed without conscious monitoring. Episodes are often followed by disorientation and no memory of what took place.