Sleepwalking and Violence: A Very Common Connection

    Sleepwalking and Violence: A Very Common Connection

    A little morning in May 1987
    after half past one in the morning, a 23-year-old Canadian boy, Kenneth Parks,
    he drove to his stepfather's house and strangled him. A year later it was
    convicted, but a thorough investigation revealed that Parks had been
    victim of an episode of sonnambulismo
    during the assassination.

    This story inspired the film “The
    Sleepwalker Killing ". It must be said that these cases are extreme, but the
    violence during sleepwalking episodes is not entirely unusual. For
    this, even if in the past I have already referred to the causes
    and consequences of sleepwalking, now I'd like to point out the
    connection between sleepwalking and violence. In 1995, a study that analyzed
    64 people suffering from sleepwalking, showed that more than half of
    these exhibited violent behavior during the episodes. An analysis
    posterior concluded that 70% of people who suffer from sleepwalking can
    act violently. Indeed, other epidemiological studies
    confirmed that violence in people suffering from sleepwalking
    it is not a problem to be underestimated. In 2010 a study that analyzed i
    data from over 20.000 people from six different European countries showed that
    about 1,7% of these suffered from violent sleep behaviors.
    However, the researchers think the figure could be even higher. Obviously, the main problem
    it consists in the lack of control by the person involved and by
    his ability to develop complex actions while he is sleeping. Education
    made with functional resonance methods have shown this to be
    due to the fact that during an episode of sleepwalking the areas of the
    prefrontal cortex (by which we regulate our decisions and
    behaviors) are inactive. However, the areas involved in the control of
    movements, including the posterior cingulate cortex and some parts of the
    cerebellum, exhibited enormous activity. However, these changes on the level
    brain are not enough to explain the violence. To be fair,
    science still has no definitive answer to explain the connection. In any case,
    Mark Pressman, a doctor from Thomas Jefferson University, has
    analyzed 32 cases of nocturnal violence and realized that most
    of these were provoked by encounters with other people during the episode of
    sleepwalking. It is also known that triggering dreams
    they are present during sleepwalking and could lead to violence
    as these people often report very vivid images that they generate in
    fear them. For this, many specialists speculate that people become
    violent as their brain senses it is about to be attacked.
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