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稀奇古怪的梦游
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There’s a famous scene near the end of Shakespeare’s “Macbeth” in which Lady Macbeth, riddled with guilt, sleepwalks through the castle. She rises from bed with her eyes wide open and obsessively washes off the blood she imagines on her hands. All this while in her PJs, fast asleep. Some 400 years after Shakespeare penned the scene with her majesty’s midnight stroll, we know little more about sleep disorders than the Bard did. What we do understand to be true, however, is that people experiencing such peculiar sleep disorders, or parasomnias, are capable of remarkable feats. Half on, half off “Sleepwalking simply represents an admixture of wakefulness and non-dream sleep,” explains Dr. Mark Mahowald, a neurologist and widely recognized expert on sleep disorders. “Literally, part of your brain is awake and part is asleep. So you can perform very complex behaviors without conscious awareness.” The wakeful part of a sleepwalker’s brain allows many actions to be completed as if fully awake. With unknown motives, sleepwalkers can rearrange furniture or even drive cars for long distances (though they usually crash). There have been reports of sleepwalkers riding horses and flying helicopters. But the sleeping portion keeps the brain from recognizing a face, feeling pain or retaining any memory of the episode. Mahowald notes that nocturnal activities are very often marked by some bizarre component. A woman makes her way to the kitchen in the night and makes a meal out of raw meat. Or salt sandwiches. Or buttered cigarettes. The dark side Armchair psychology might suggest that the nighttime activities belie some subconscious motive: A man repairs a telephone in his sleep because he needs to talk with someone, much as Lady Macbeth tried to wash away her guilt. Quite the contrary, say the experts. “The actions usually are very out of character,” says psychologist Rosalind Cartwright, who heads the behavioral sciences department at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center in Chicago. “They’re strange to the people themselves and to the people who know them. And when they are interrupted [in this stage], aggression can be triggered, or sexual behavior. Disturbing a sleepwalker seems to sometimes trigger the deep, primitive part of the brain.” Here is a sampling of the more incredible and infamous acts that have been attributed to sleepwalking. **In June 2005, a 15-year-old girl was spotted on a crane at a London construction site at 2 in the morning. She was curled up, fast asleep, on the crane’s counterweight—130 feet above the ground. She had somehow scaled the crane and then walked across a narrow beam to the counterweight. Rescuers secured her, then a call was placed to her cell phone to wake her up. **A Toronto man named Kenneth Parks had a history of sleepwalking. In May 1987, he fell asleep in front of the television. He later got up, drove 14 miles away and viciously attacked his in-laws, killing his mother-in-law. He was acquitted based on a sleepwalking defense by the Canadian Supreme Court. (Says Mahowald, “It’s certainly conceivable that a horrible act could happen in someone who was sleepwalking; and, therefore, without conscious awareness or responsibility. There’s no question that can happen. But [I] don’t get involved legally because there’s no way of retrospectively saying, ‘Yes, the person was sleepwalking at that point in time.’ ”) **January, 1997. Alerted by a neighbor’s call, police in Phoenix, Ariz., storm the house of Scott Falater. His wife is found in the swimming pool having been stabbed 44 times and held underwater. Falater, a family man and devote Mormon, had killed his wife then returned to bed. It was reported that when Falater realized he was being questioned by homicide detectives, he asked, “Does that mean my wife is dead?” A sleepwalking defense was launched, but Falater was found guilty. Cartwright was a defense witness in the Falater case. “I am dead sure he was sleepwalking. The characteristics were very well defined.” She explains that Falater exhibited all the telltale signs of a sleepwalker: He had a history of sleepwalking, had been under great stress, lacked sleep and had absolutely no memory of the murder. Defense attorneys said Falater had been fixing the pool’s pump with a knife, in his sleep, when his wife approached him. Interrupted, he apparently responded with incredible rage. Cartwright contends that someone in this state does not recognize a familiar face and may think something terrible is happening to them. They then defend themselves—sometimes, like an animal. It dawns on you Of course, these are stories that were sensational enough (or terrible enough) to make the news. The 4 percent to 5 percent of the adult population that sleepwalks usually does something innocuous like taking out the trash or perhaps peeing in a closet. Still, it’s important to take steps toward safety. “If someone in the household has been sleepwalking, have them evaluated at a good sleep center,” advises Cartwright. “For any sleepwalker, it is important not to let them get sleep-deprived. Keep a regular schedule.” Sleepwalkers can injure themselves by crawling out a bedroom window, putting an arm through a glass door or, say, climbing up on construction-site crane. Another reason to seek medical attention for parasomnias is that they can provide clues to other conditions, such as increased anxiety and stress. A recent study even linked sleepwalking to hyperthyroidism, citing eight cases in which the two conditions emerged simultaneously. For these patients, the sleepwalking ceased with treatment of hyperthyroidism. Sleepwalking is more common in children. The first line of defense for parents is to ensure that staircases and low windows are protected with baby gates or guards. The child should not be able to make his or her way through a door to the outside. An electric eye, with monitors in the parents’ room, can help determine when and where the child is going bump in the night. Researchers at the Stanford University Sleep Disorders Clinic have had success treating child sleepwalkers by solving breathing problems such as those brought on by snoring, allergies and swollen tonsils or adenoids. Of course, family members may want to seek treatment given the threat—albeit remote—that a sleepwalker will become aggressive. “One man came in after his wife woke up with his hands around her throat,” Cartwright remembers. “That’ll do it right there.” |
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