(Repeat) Adventures in sleep(Repeat) Adventures in sleep
All In The Mind
At night our brain can have adventures. Even if they're fully asleep, some people end up sleep walking or sleep driving! The neuroscience of nightmares and dreaming—and what they can tell us about the workings of our brain. This program was originally broadcast in June 2019.
28:52•21 Jun 2020
Wild Nights and Wired Brains: Strange Sleep Stories and What They Reveal
Episode Overview
- Sleep supports brain "housekeeping", including toxin removal, memory, and emotional processing, but its full purpose remains uncertain.
- Non-REM parasomnias such as sleepwalking and sleep-related eating arise from a "disjointed" brain where some regions are awake while others stay in deep sleep.
- REM sleep behaviour disorder occurs when normal muscle paralysis fails, leading people to act out vivid, often frightening dreams.
- Narcolepsy with cataplexy involves unstable sleep–wake control, sudden sleep attacks, and emotionally triggered muscle paralysis linked to specific brain damage.
- Good sleep health is better judged by regular sleep times and feeling refreshed than by a fixed target number of hours, as individual sleep needs vary widely.
“"We still haven't really fully understood essentially what we are spending a third of our lives doing."”
In this eye-opening episode, you'll learn about what your brain might be getting up to while you’re fast asleep — and it’s a lot stranger than most people think. All In The Mind host Lynne Malcolm chats with neurologist and sleep physician Dr Guy Leschziner, who shares cases that sound like urban legends but are firmly rooted in clinical reality.
You’ll hear about Jackie, who didn’t just sleepwalk, but ended up riding her motorbike and later driving her car in her sleep, with no memory of it. Dr Leschziner explains how such extreme non-REM sleep behaviours arise when different parts of the brain are in different states, describing it as a “disjointed brain” where movement areas wake up while rational thinking and memory stay deeply asleep.
The conversation moves through sleep-eating episodes involving bleach, bird seed and blocks of lard, and then into REM sleep disorders where people act out vivid nightmares. One patient, John, lashes out and shouts in his sleep as he dreams of being chased or attacked, because the usual REM paralysis fails.
There’s also a twisty story about Robert and Linda, where a partner’s reports of disturbing sleep-talking turn out to be false, showing how vulnerable we are to what others claim happens while we sleep. From there, Dr Leschziner outlines hypnagogic hallucinations, sleep paralysis, narcolepsy and cataplexy, including people collapsing with laughter or dozing off during football or sex. For anyone worried about getting the “right” number of hours, there’s reassurance too.
Dr Leschziner stresses that, despite headlines about poor sleep and disease, what really matters is regular sleep, feeling generally refreshed, and judging sleep need by how you feel rather than a magic number. If you’ve ever wondered what your brain is doing for that mysterious third of your life, this conversation might make you look at bedtime very differently.
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