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Causes of night terror in kids
Significance of night terror in children
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What is night terror? Healthline.com defines it as " as a sleep disorder causing feelings of terror or dread, and typically occurs during the first hours of stage 3-4 non-rapid eye movement (NREM)".
Night terror typically appears in children, from age 3 to age 12 (Mayo Clinic, 2011). Most children stop experiencing night terror when they reach early adolescence, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry occurrences varies from individual to individual and ranges from days to weeks and even longer.
Night terror is relatively unknown. For this reason, many confuse night terror and nightmare, which happens during another stage of sleep (REM). Moreover, night terror is less prevalent and affects a smaller percentage
I decided to analyze one of the main characters in The Guardian, this is a movie about the United States Coast Guard Rescue Swimmers. One of the main charters; Senior Chief Ben Randall is a very decorated rescue swimmer, many people say he is a legend. As for his age I know he is past the age of 40 but otherwise it is not stated. After an accident in the line of duty he is sent to work at “A” school which is the Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer training facility.
As we all know, sleep is an important part of our lives. Without the proper amounts and type of sleep, fatigue and other problems can arise. Generally, we can clearly distinguish between a sleeping person and a person that is awake. With sleeping disorders, the distinction between an awake person and a sleeping person becomes more intriguing. What is the difference, how does it relate to the I-function and consciousness? Each sleeping disorder has its own unique answer to this question. It is essential to understand sleep to fully appreciate it. However, many aspects of it remain a mystery. We do have some degree of understanding of sleep. Within our sleep cycle a type of unusual sleep occurs, REM sleep. During this cycle the periods of REM sleep are interspersed with slow wave sleep in alternation. Each period of REM sleep (there are usually 4 or 5 periods a night) lasts for approximately 5 to 30 minutes. During these periods a sleep paradox occurs. An enormous amount of brain activity takes place; this is sometimes even more activity then when awake. This clearly indicates that sleep is not simply to rest our mind and not to think. So, during this period our brains are extremely active, yet there is usually no input or output. During this period, along with the random eye movement (REM), there is a complete loss of muscle tone. Essentially, at this point, the motor system is paralyzed (normally the body inhibits any movement). The autonomic nervous system also alters its behavior. The regulation of body temperature is lost and the blood pressure, heart rate, respiratory rates shows increased variability. REM sleep can be detected by measuring the electrical activity of the brain with an electroencephalogram. At this point, the EEG will show the same pattern of activity as when the brain is awake.
After doing a little research I have come across a very interesting topic which is Fear-Induced Hallucination. What this paper is going to focus on is How Sleep Paralysis Triggers Hallucination. After researching, I learned that hallucination actually starts during an episode of sleep paralysis. As stated in the textbook, sleep paralysis is often compared to being an evils work of art. It results from some errors of the neural transmission in the brain during REM sleep. Also, during a frightening state of sleep paralysis, one experiences total body immobility and cannot speak or move besides little eye movements and respiration.
Narcolepsy is a sleeping abnormality in which a person experiences sudden attacks of sleepiness during the day. Narcolepsy is an often-inherited neurological sleep disorder caused by the brains inability to regulate a stable sleep-wake cycle. (Turkington & Harris). People who suffer from this abnormality usually experience attacks of muscle weakness or paralysis and occasional dreamlike experiences while awake. Narcolepsy is a disturbance of the portion of sleep called rapid eye movement (REM) sleep into the waking period. During normal REM sleep, the muscles become deeply relaxed and the nerves to the muscles are basically paralyzed. The normal sleep period begins with about 90 minutes of non-REM sleep before REM sleep begins. But for a person
The discovery of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep suggested that sleep was not, as it was thought to be, a dormant state but rather a mentally dynamic one. Your brain is, in fact, very active in this state, almost to the level at which it is when a person is awake. Yet during this active stage in which most dreams occur, the movements of the rest of the body are completely stilled. To imagine this paralysis during dreams not occurring is a frightful image, since in many cases dreams are violent and active. When the neurotransmitters that control the movement of the body do not work properly the person develops REM sleep behavioral disorder (RBD).
According to the history, Sleep Paralysis was classified as nightmare, a term that evolved into our modern definition by Samuel Johnson. It was widely considered to be the work of the demons, which were thought to sit on the chest of the sleeper. Various forms of magic and spiritual possession were also advanced as causes. But Sleep Paralysis can occur in the state between REM sleep, where dreaming occurs, and waking up. During REM sleep, the brain paralyses the body in order to keep us away from carrying out our dream-actions that could harm ourselves somehow. At times, our brain does not put off these dreams or the paralysis that comes along with them, resulting in a potentially terrifying experience. Sleep paralysis had been linked to disorders such as migraines, anxiety disorders, and obstructive sleep apnea. But when linked to another disorder, sleep paralysis commonly occurs together with the neurological sleep disorder called Narcolepsy. David McCarty, a sleep researcher at Louisiana State Health University, explained that in sleep paralysis, two of the key REM sleep components are presen...
Fisher, C.J., Byrne, A., Edwards, and Kahn, E. (1970) REM and NREM nightmares. In E. Hartman (ed), Sleep and Dreaming. Boston : Little Brown
Sleep paralysis is a condition that occurs at either the onset or upon awakening of sleep. The medical terms for the two forms of sleep paralysis are hypnogogic and hypnopompic (1). When a person falls asleep, the body secretes hormones that relax certain muscles within the body, causing it to go into paralysis. Doing this prevents the body from acting out a person's dream, which could result in an injury. Sleep paralysis generally runs within one's family or in those who suffer from narcolepsy (2), but there is currently no explanation for why some people get it while others do not.
However, the NREM sleep is the stages that come before the REM sleep, not always people reach to the NREM sleep. It a light sleep that could in some way make person feel that they didn’t sleep at all. NREM have stages from 1 to 4 and each step get more deeper in sleep, for example; stage one, is when the person try to sleep and closing his/her eyes, it takes about 10 minutes for that stage to move on the second stage. In the second stage of NREM sleep here when the person is finally will realize t...
Did you ever awaken and find yourself unable to move? Perhaps you sensed a presence in your room or a pressure on your chest. This is sleep paralysis. It is a common disorder that affects millions of people. Most believe it occurs as we are on the edge of REM sleep. The disorder has been connected with such hallucinogenic events such as alien abduction or an evil presence. Sleep paralysis is an inability to move or speak, occasionally accompanied by hallucinations, for up to several minutes upon awakening or just before falling asleep.
Is anyone truly a stranger to nightmares? Has anyone not woken up in a feverish sweat with a racing pulse or pounding heart? Whose eyes have never wildly searched their room for the phantoms of a dream? Now, what if the familiar consolation of learning it was all in your head never came? How do you wake up from a nightmare that is, in fact, a reality? I think I’m getting ahead of myself. What I mean to say is, I was raped, and rape is a nightmare.
"Nightmares." Psychology Today: Health, Help, Happiness. Sussex Publishers, LLC, 13 May 2010. Web. 8 Apr. 2014. .
The sleep cycle comes in a multi-stage cycle. All in all there are five cycles. The first four of the stages is where there is non-rapid eye movement (NREM). As the fifth stage occurs, that is where rapid eyes moment (REM) happens. Nightmares almost always occur in the second half of a persons sleep and it is always followed with an awakening of the individual even if the person doesn’t remember waking up during the night. Nine times out of ten, when people’s brain can’t handle what is going on during the rapid eye movement stage, they wake up very panically and are also very aware of their surroundings.
Sleep disorders are an underestimated public health concern considering that fifty to seventy million Americans are affected. Technological advances in the field of sleep have facilitated various theories to explain the need for and the purpose of sleep. Scientist have uncovered many types of sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy. Sleep disorders affect men ,women, children, the elderly, and the obese in different ways. Factors such as the number of children and the effects of menopause have been studied to determine their effects on sleep. Various treatments have been utilized ranging from non-pharmacologic to pharmacologic methods. Scientist have pinpointed areas of the brain that are involved in sleep deprivation and hormones that ultimately affect sleep.
How the amount of REM sleep you get can change. It’s the time of night where most likely you would be dreaming. People believe one reason as a child you have a higher amount of dreams as a kid because as a child you get more REM sleep. REM sleep is part of a cycle of how you sleep so say you were woken up in the middle of the night during REM sleep you might ruin that cycle. When we are sleeping and specifically in REM sleep our brains are reorganizing itself and it is also giving itself a deep clean. There are also other things that can affect how you sleep at night like sleep behavior disorder, basically during their dreams when they are supposed to be resting there body and dreaming should be a brain activity. People with the sleep behavior