WeAreTheKey

Sleep walking and other sleep "actions" are fascinating to me because I have neither performed nor even witnessed a person sleepwalk. I've only heard stories. I wake up in pretty much the exact position that I fell asleep every night. So does my wife. And neither of us have noticed the other talk in their sleep, either. My daughter does, on occasion, call out or speak a phrase in her sleep, and she tends to toss and turn like kids do. For a while, we would often wake up and find her sleeping on the floor next to her bed, or even completely under her bed, fully asleep (although that hasn't happened in a few months now). Sleep is definitely one of the strangest, yet most natural, of life's processes.

On this note, check out this article:
http://health.msn.com/health-topics/art ... &Gt1=31036

Very strange indeed are the workings of the mind

not so much walk, though I had once when camping woken up outisde of the tent sleeping bag and all, with no explanation as to how(when I was in like 4th grade)and no one in the tent4 other people could tell me how i got out either..
but I do yell out, have been known to sit up and talk(or more like mumble) as well as wake myself up laughing..

That article is kinda scary.. how come so many ofthe actions were violent?
I mean dreams can be intense.. but...man.. possibly there are potentially repressed feelings/thoughts/emotions that have become so intense that the subconscious acts them out for the body??

I hope my sleep issues dont develop into walking, i think i would feel robbed of my body if it stated acting on its own.. I imagine it would be liek being possesed.. maybe that is where the possesion thoughts originated?

Interesting.. the mind.. has sooo many mysteries.. will we ever have[all] the answers?

No I've never been a sleepwalker or sleeptalker or anything like that. I do occasionally wake myself up laughing. That's always fun because whatever you were laughing about is forgotten as soon as you wake up, but then when you realize you were laughing, that itself is funny, so you start laughing about that instead.
Good times!

In that article, I couldn't help but notice this info: "...he and his two colleagues have fielded approximately 150 requests for case evaluations, some from as far off as New Zealand. Murder, sexual assault, DUI, child abuse, and "suicide" are just a sampling of crimes they've encountered...About one-third of those case referrals involve the alleged influence of the sleep aid Ambien.

Ahhh... nothin better than a peaceful night's sleep with a good dose of Ambien!

What I don't get is that for someone to truly be asleep, they must be using absolutely minimal conscious thought. And yet it is claimed that some actions are done "asleep" which would require a great deal of conscious thought.....???.....like this: "the woman who dreamed she was cooking for a dinner party and awoke at 6:30 a.m. to find the table fully set and the meal ready".

I just don't see how that is possible, because of the level of complexity involved in the conscious act of preparing an entire meal and setting the table. It's not like stumbling in a daze down the hall and out the front door. It involves opening the fridge, pulling out all the right ingredients, getting out the correct utensils, pots and pans etc, setting the stove to the correct temperature and time, mixing ingredients in the right order, timing it all properly, setting the table properly etc etc....

There are so many decisions, adjustments, interactions etc that are required that....I have a hard time believing this could be done "asleep".
Like sleep murder after driving 14 miles?! Which includes beating and stabbing multiple people to death?! Hmmmm.....

But perhaps it is possible, I don't know.

Yes, the term "sleep" in this reference is a loose one. Of course, "sleep________" is just the lay term for it. Parasomnia seems to be the clinical term, which also infers a "sleep-like" condition. The fact that the person is not "consiously" aware of their actions means that at least part of their mind is in a "sleep" mode, while the rest is in "awake" mode.......quasi-consious?

Yeah, quasi-conscious... which is actually more like dual-conscious, or bi-conscious, as in the case of the cooking woman. She was performing a lengthy, complex task which her eyes were obviously seeing and her mind obviously registering, yet she was simulatneouly dreaming of hosting a dinner party... so clearly what she was "seeing" in her mind was totally separate from what her real eyes were seeing... meaning she was living two separate realities at the same time, linked only by the fact that her body was performing similar actions.

The same would be true for anyone performing a complex "sleep-action" while dreaming about doing something else, or even something similar. It's like their brains have performed the extraordinary task of duplicating themselves, or splitting themselves into creating two separate versions of an individual inside the same body. Like an alternate version of schizophrenia.

NEAT-O.

The brain has never ceased to amaze me with the mind-bending feats it can pull off. Our relatively boring, everyday experiences mask the powerful, reality-destroying machinery that sits queitly in all our heads, usually just displaying our environment and allowing us to move about, but......occasionally annihilating the usual laws of physics and psychology and splitting people in two or creating hyper-dimensional votexes of time and space. Excellent work, brainmeats!

Possibly it is more like a personality disorder, like multiple personality disorder, but semingly with just 2 minds instead of several? Or perhaps the actions of cooking the entire meal had been repeated so many times that the subconscious mind is actuallly the one in control when the woman cooks in her daily life, like muscle memory, and since her Dream state self is seeing the actions it works as a guide for the autonomus actions of cooking?
Regardless it is quite interesting/a little frightening..
i do know some one who has a history of eating in their sleep. waking with no recollection of doing so and only the evidence of eaten food as proof. I had never even thought that such a thing would be possible, and in all honesty have in the past had doubts about people doing complex actions in their sleep, but am less skeptical now..
Perhaps in instances such as that the body is having a drop in blood sugar, causing an intense need for sustinance and the brain kinda kicks into auto pilot to 'save" the body by supplying it with food?
So many awesome theories... So many interesting things..
Oh I love the questions that arrive from sleep, the mind and dreams... endless

Yes, except that with Multiple Personality Disorder, the mind is either one person or the other at any given moment. In the sleep-activity situation, they are literally two separate people at the exact same time.
That's why I coined the radically fresh new term Bi-conscious.
It's not in the dictionary yet.................but it will be! You just wait.

Bi-Conscious.. I like it, let us all become-(nonviolently)- bie conscious!!! it'lll be neat.. oh wait... I dont really wanna fall of an elevator shaft, or drive my car in my sleep.. I have enough nightmares about car issues.. the last thing i need is them coming to life...

It would be REALLY interesting to SEE some one in one of these states though.. man if only i could be a sleep/dream researcher...

Word.
I think you might need some more coffee or something, yer spellin is nt rihgt laetly.

I'm just sayin.

check that..no food, not enough coffee..rough nerves... I will work on it....

What if it is multiple personality disorder, but the consiousness wall that seperates the personalities can temporarily disappear during "sleep" and function as one. They are (sort of) two people at the same time (i.e. bi-conscious).

From what I'm aware, multiple-personalities generally arise from a mental trauma occuring (usually) during childhood, where someone mentally escapes a situation by creating other 'people' inside of them who they can 'escape to' for comfort and to help them pretend they are somewhere else/living a different life etc.

That seems quite different from someone performing advanced sleep-activities, especially when the sleeping person is performing a task which closely resembles their dream (as in the cooking woman).
It's like if you see consciousness as a signal travelling down a cable, multiple-personality would equate to that signal hitting a switch and being diverted to a different cable altogether, going a different direction. Whereas the sleeping "bi-consciousness" would resemble the signal hitting a splitter, splitting it into two cables running parallel to eachother simultaneously. And as with a split signal, where each one is weaker than it was before it split, the two "consciousnesses" of the split person would both be less than complete; the dream one is in that weird, fuzzy 'dream-state', and the one actually performing the task is operating without any real sense of awareness at all.

I wish I could experience something like this! What would be truly incredible would be if someone dreamed about going to a bowling alley and bowling a game while in reality sitting down at the sewing machine and sewing a dress. THAT would be impressive.
Or dreaming about golfing while actually playing a game of darts.

I just had a really funny thought about a guy having a long, elaborate dream about being a black slave in the 1850's, plowing a field in the hot sun all day.....then waking up in their living room at 3:30 in the morning, slumped against their couch with a massive mess in front of them, having just eaten 7 bowls of oatmeal with cream cheese smeared on their face.....hahaha!!
If I ever make a movie, this will definitely be a scene.

Nice!

How about spending all day at your desk performing your task while dreaming of your team winning a State Championship........wait, I already do that. I'm a sleep-worker! WOO HOO!

How strange my mind is

How about working all day long while dreaming about being on vacation, then finally taking a week off for vacation and dreaming the whole time about being at work.... guffaw!

Errr...yeah.