Night terrors, is a particular dramatic form of partial awakening from deep sleep. The proper name for night terror is “pavor nocturnus (from the Latin pavor, meaning fear, and nocturnus, of course related to the night time). The French use different word incubus by which they mean an evil spirit that lays upon and possesses a sleeping person. The term originally referred to a male evil spirit that lay upon and copulated with a sleeping woman.

Night terror most commonly occurs in children between the ages of five and seven. Though they can occur ay any age, they are rare in adults. 96% of people who have night terror have a family history of similar episodes, or of sleepwalking. In children, the night terrors are not associated with significant psychological abnormalities such as phobias, obsessive compulsive disorders, depression, excessive agitation, or stress.

Night terror occurs early in the night, usually as the child is exiting from the first period of deep sleep, often within one hour of going to bed. Like sleepwalking, the night terror occurs in a situation of partial awakening, the brain is neither completely alert. The most characteristic feature is that the night terror is associated with intense fear and panic that produces the extreme anxiety with arousal, the flushed face, rapid heart beat, elevated blood pressure, and other changes of a severe emotional response.

Because the brain is only to questions or instructions, they are not processing the input properly. Similarly, because the brain is not working normally, memory is not laid down, and the child will not recall the episode in the morning. Though night are disturbing to watch, they are often short lived and the child returns to sleep without difficulty.

The episodes occur more frequently in children than in adults because, just like sleepwalking, they occur during deep sleep and of course children have more deep sleep than adults do. Any factor than increases deep sleep such as fatigue can increase the frequency of night terror.

Keywords: night terror, insomnia, sleep, sleepless, sleep disorder, rem behavior disorder, sleepwalking, somnambulism

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This entry was posted on Sunday, August 19th, 2007 at 7:31 am and is filed under Night Terror. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.