Step Brothers | Why Do Sleepwalkers Do Such Strange Things?! | A Case Study

Have you ever wondered why sleepwalkers do such strange things? In this video, we use the movie Step Brothers to find out.


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If you’ve ever woken up to find yourself naked on your front lawn, drinking from your garden hose, you might be a sleepwalker.


Or just a very interesting person.

But what is sleepwalking? And why is it that sleepwalkers do such bizarre things while they’re asleep?


According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, sleepwalking is a type of “parasomnia,” or sleep disorder, where people have “undesirable motor, verbal, or experiential phenomena occurring in association with sleep, specific stages of sleep, or sleep-awake transition phases.”


In simple terms, that means you do and say weird stuff while you’re unconscious.

Sleepwalking is closely related to other sleep disorders like night terrors, sleep eating, and “confusional arousal.”


That last one sounds like an awkward phase for teenage boys, but it basically means a person remains in a confused state after they wake up.

All of these related sleep issues fall under the category of “non-rapid eye movement parasomnias.”


That means they happen during “slow-wave sleep,” also known as deep sleep.

Though there’s some debate, experts generally agree that sleep occurs in four stages. This deep, non-REM sleep occurs during the first three stages, when memories are formed and the brain recovers from its daily work.


Paradoxically, dreaming is rare during this deep-sleep stage. Most dreaming actually happens during the REM, or rapid-eye-movement, phase of sleep, which tends to occur later in the night.

So the idea that people are having dreams so vivid that they “act them out” during sleepwalking doesn’t hold up.


Instead, what really happens is a physiological “glitch” in the brain, where it tries to go from the deep-sleep phase directly into being awake—instead of transitioning into the next natural sleep phase.


When this happens, the sleepwalker becomes “stuck” between asleep and awake. They move around and talk as though they’re conscious, but they have no idea what’s going on.


Unfortunately, there’s no real cure, aside from locking doors and blocking stairwells to keep the sleepwalker safe.


And as for the claim that waking up a sleepwalking person is dangerous, that’s a myth. Waking a sleepwalker doesn’t cause any medical threat to them, but coming to in a strange place may cause them distress, and may lead to them becoming angry or agitated.

Which means it might not be the best idea for you.


What’s interesting is that brain activity during the “sleepwalking” stages of sleep is typically more logical, compared to the often absurd hallucinations of our dreams.


But that doesn’t stop people doing some pretty illogical things while they’re sleepwalking.


Stories abound of the strange encounters people have with sleepwalkers.


Some have been known to take baths while fully dressed, urinate in their fridges or dresser drawers, or drink cleaning products.


And scarily enough, some sleepwalkers get behind the wheel and drive.


Most often, though, sleepwalking results in unconscious visits to the fridge to binge eat, which is why studies have shown that more than half of sleepwalkers become overweight.


And on a darker note, there’s even a legal phenomenon called “homicidal sleepwalking,” in which a sleepwalker kills someone without realizing it.


One of the most famous cases happened in 1987, when a 23-year-old Canadian man named Kenneth Parks brutally murdered his mother-in-law with a tire iron while she slept.

But parks wasn’t the sort of violent psychopath you might expect. In fact, he had a close relationship with his mother-in-law, who referred to him as her “gentle giant.”

Parks insisted he was asleep during the grizzly attack and had no memory of doing it. And though authorities were skeptical, testing by sleep specialists confirmed that he was a sleepwalker, and he was acquitted of the murder.


Fortunately, most sleepwalkers are children, who lack the physical strength to commit murder. As many as 17 percent of kids sleepwalk at some point, usually between the ages of 8 and 12, but they often grow out of it by their teen years.


That said, sleepwalking can start at any stage of life, and up to 4 percent of adults sleepwalk regularly.

So if you ever wake up in your yard without pants on, you’ll know why.