Somnambulism

Somnambulism, more commonly known as sleepwalking or noctambulism, is a phenomenon of combined sleep and wakefulness classified as a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family, and can also be understood as a disorder of state dissociation in which features of wakefulness and deep non-REM sleep occur simultaneously in different brain regions. It occurs during the slow-wave stage of sleep, in a state of low consciousness, while the sleeper performs activities normally carried out in full consciousness, ranging from benign acts such as talking, sitting up in bed, walking to a bathroom, eating or cleaning, to hazardous ones such as cooking, driving a vehicle, or violent gestures and grabbing at hallucinated objects. Sleepwalkers typically have little or no memory of the episode, though partial recall has been reported, and although their eyes are open their expression is dim and glazed, with an episode lasting anywhere from thirty seconds to thirty minutes; while most cases involve simple, repeated behaviors, there are occasional reports of more complex behavior performed while asleep, though their legitimacy is often disputed.