What is even more surprising is that in an unknown town in southeastern Peru, 80% of the city's more than 20,000 people suffer from sleepwalking. During the day, the town is silent and there are not many pedestrians, but at night, it is like a "night market", bustling and lively. These people are all wearing pajamas, wandering around and behaving strangely. If you don't know, you will be shocked by this phenomenon.
What strange phenomenon is sleepwalking? There is an explanation that sleepwalking is to express the content of dreams vividly with external actions. This is mostly caused by various emotional fluctuations in people's inner world. A typical example is Ms Madoff in Shakespeare's works. She sleepwalked because she felt extremely guilty about her murder. The cure for sleepwalking is to get rid of all the troubles and worries in the sleepwalker's heart.
But are those sleepwalkers asleep or awake? Experts think they are half asleep and half awake. Dr Tiezinritz once spent 65,438+00 years studying this problem. He said: "The motor organs of sleepwalkers are awake, but their sensory organs are asleep, at least partially asleep. In other words, they can walk and do things while sleeping, but they don't know what they are doing. "
There are other interesting questions about sleepwalking. For example, people usually think that it is very bad to wake up sleepwalkers suddenly, and even have unimaginable consequences. However, experts believe that this effect is similar to waking a sleeping person with an alarm clock.
Professor Christine of St. George's Hospital in London recently put forward a view that sleepwalkers are actually awake, but their brains are in a "split state", and the complete function of their brains is blocked, but some thinking processes of their brains are still going on. This "split" state of the brain is a protective mechanism and can reflect the mental state of sleepwalkers when they are depressed.
St George's Hospital conducted a series of routine personality tests on patients admitted to the "expert clinic for sleep disorders". The results show that sleepwalkers have many indicators that are no different from ordinary people. However, in special events, some indexes are very high, and some people show a personality that likes to be lively and active too much. This personality characteristic is also obvious in people with split personality who are fully awake, people who are easily awakened from deep sleep and people who are in a state of panic.
The measurement results show that the physiological changes of patients during sleepwalking and night terrors are very similar to those of a sleeping person who is suddenly awakened.
Researchers at St George's Hospital believe that the brain activity of sleepwalkers is similar to the temporary disorientation that ordinary people feel when they wake up from a deep sleep. It is common for sleepwalkers to suddenly wake up, but this disorientation has further developed into a state of schizophrenia.
But these are just some speculations and assumptions, and the real substantive questions have not been answered.