Scientists have found that sleepwalking is a failure in the mechanism of human survival. According to recent studies by Stanford University, about 4% of adults may have experienced somnabulism.
Today, there is an increase in the number of cases of sleepwalking due to the special action of some types of hypnotics. Often, sleepwalking carries some danger to a person, since at this moment he is in an unconscious state. Researchers tried to give an answer about the causes of sleepwalking. For this, we used electroencephalograms recorded with the involvement of somnabula.
“The rational part of the brain remains inactive, and also does not exercise its usual control over the limbic system and the musculoskeletal system. At the same time, behavior is regulated by a kind of archaic survival system, similar to the one that is noticeable during struggle or flying,”explains Italian neuroscientist Lino Nobili.
Some animals can be active while sleeping. Some birds continue to fly even when they are sleeping. This mechanism was developed for the need to make multi-day flights over the ocean. In humans, the brain remains partially active to detect possible threats. A professor of psychology at the University of Montreal explains this by the fact that information is filtered by the brain, which continues to work in the background and decides whether to switch to active mode. Today, it is assumed that among primates only humans have a tendency to sleepwalking, which indicates the development of this survival mechanism as a result of evolution.
Valery Antonov