Sleep talking is predominantly seen in individuals with mental health issues or conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. Sleep talking can also be associated with nightmares, especially in children.
Sleep talking usually occurs by itself and is most often harmless. However, in some cases, it might be a sign of a more serious sleep disorder or health condition. REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD) and sleep terrors are two types of sleep disorders that cause some people to shout during sleep.
The good news is that for most people it is a rare and short-lived occurrence. It's common for people to experience at least one episode of sleep talking during their life, making it one of the most common abnormal behaviors that can occur during sleep.
This usually occurs in the lighter stages of Non-REM sleep (Stages 1 and 2) and usually sleepers have no memory of these vocalizations. The actual words or phrases have little to no truth, and usually occur when they are stressed, during times of fever, as a medication side effect or during disrupted sleep. '
The Sleep-Talking Brain
On the other hand, since non-REM sleep doesn't lead to paralysis, Barrett says sleep talking during this stage is thought to be caused by “partial awakenings” of brain regions involved in language production that can be picked up with electrodes on the scalp, called EEG.
There's no clear meaning of the things people say during their sleep. They may appear to mean something else for us but absolutely mean nothing to a sleep talker. Sleep talking is as healthy as dreaming; it's not an indication of anything wrong or any sleep problems to worry about.
It is not dangerous to wake up a patient form sleepwalking, but experts who discourage it quote it is unsuccessful and leads to patient disorientation,” he says. “Try to ease them back to bed without making forceful attempts.
Sleep talking (or somniloquy) can be considered as a part of a larger family of types of “sleep utterances,” such as mumbling, laughing, groaning, and whistling during sleep.
Sleep Talking: Children are more likely to talk in their sleep and can outgrow it as they get older. As children get older, sleep talking episodes usually decrease and can happen once every few months or so. They are most common in kids ages 2 to 12.
Signs of Sleep Talking
Sleep talking is considered a parasomnia, which is a type of sleep disorder that involves abnormal behaviors or experiences that happen during sleep: The main symptom of somniloquy is talking during sleep without being aware of it.
Laughing during sleep is a common occurrence. Researchers believe that the cause is typically laughing at a dream during rapid eye movement sleep, which is entirely harmless. In some cases, sleep laughing has links to sleep disorders. In rare cases, hypnogely can be a symptom of a neurological disorder.
The most common word spoken during speech episodes was “no,” and this word appeared around four times more when the subjects were asleep than when they were awake.
Somniloquy is the scientific name for sleep talking, a sleep disorder that causes people to call out, speak, or produce incoherent language during sleep. Sleep talking is one of the more common sleep disorders and is more widespread among children and adolescents than adults.
Sleep talking, also known as somniloquy, may occur during both the REM (rapid eye movement) and non-REM sleep phases.
There seems to be a universal myth that you should not wake someone up if they are sleepwalking because they may hurt you or themselves. The truth is you should wake them up if they are in danger or putting someone else in danger. But, most times, the best option is to lead them back to bed.
Sleep talking often occurs when an individual is just waking up. Yet, most people do not know that they are talking in their sleep while it is happening. Sleep talking can happen during any of the stages of sleep, which include rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-REM sleep.
Sleep talking is most likely to be comprehensible to a bed partner during the REM stage of sleep (during the other stages, it'll just sound like gibberish). Sleep talking tends to occur more in men and children. It's common for children to grow out of somniloquy — only an estimated 5% of adults are sleep-talkers.
Some medications, such as antidepressants, are also found to cause sleep talking. Drugs incite and increase muscle tone in REM, causing parasomnia such as sleep talking and sleepwalking.
As children develop and grow, their dreams do too. Toddler dreams are usually just snapshots, looking much more like a slideshow than a movie, when compared to the dreams of adults. They heavily feature animals and other familiar sights, like images of people eating.
It is clinically characterized by frequent, involuntary and uncontrollable outbursts of laughing and crying. This is a distressing disorder of emotional expression at odds with the person's underlying feelings.
The eyes are usually open while someone is sleepwalking, although the person will look straight through people and not recognise them. They can often move well around familiar objects. If you talk to a person who is sleepwalking, they may partially respond or say things that do not make sense.
In adults sleep talking may be related to parasomnias such as RBD, sleep-related eating disorder (SRED) or sleepwalking. Because parasomnias often occur in healthy people, treatment for sleepwalking tends to be unnecessary. Sleepwalking that emerges in childhood often resolves as the child grows older.